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FAMILY HERBAL.
Hartshorn: The horns of the male red deer. Rasped and boiled inwater, they yield an insipid, obtunding, nutritive jelly. An astrin-gent decoction is prepared by boiling calcined hartshorn with gumarable, as directed in the Appendix.
Hellebore Black: A perennial plant growing in Germany. The root isused in medicine. It is bitter, pungent, alterative, attenuant, anddeobstruent; strongly purgative, and stimulant. This root was muchemployed by the antients in infusion and decoction. It continues tcbe administered in powder, tincture, and extract.- The latter is em-ployed with other ingredients (myrrh, &c.) against dropsical diseases.
Hellebore White: A perennial plant growing in Switzerland and othermountainous parts of Europe—part used, The root—sens. prop.Smell, disagreeable; taste, nauseous, bitterish, and very acrid—med.virt. Violently emetic and cathartic; sternutatory—mode of exhib.Externally, in powder and decoction.
Hemlock: An umbelliferous plant growing wild in moist shady places—part used, The leaves—sens. prop. Smell, foetid; taste, herbaceous—med. virt. Narcotic, in large doses; alterative, sedative, diuretic,anodyne, in smaller ones—mode of exhib. Powder of the leaves ; alsothe inspissated juice of the leaves, commonly called the extract ofhemlock. This, as well as all other medicines capable of acting sopowerfully on the nervous system, ought, if possible, to be given underthe direction of gentlemen of the medical profession. It is safe tobegin with two grains for an adult three times a-day, which has inmany instances been extended to upwards of thirty grains three timesin twenty-four hours. It is given alone, and often conjoined withather articles of the Materia Medica in the hooping cough; againsthectic occasioned by incipient tubercles of the lungs; and in scrophu-lous and schirrous disorders.
Herb Mastich, Syrian, A plant with labiated flowers—part used, Theleaves; they are aromatic, pungent, stimulant, and are used as aningredient in the compound powder of asarabacca, a sternutatory orsneezing powder, commonly called Cephalic Snuff.
Hip: The fruit employed to form a conserve that is used as a vehicle forvarious medicines.
Honey : A vegetable juice collected from flowers by the bee. It is thebasis of various medicinal compositions, and its domestic uses are toowell known to need recapitulation in the narrow limits to which weare now necessarily prescribed.
Horse-radish: a plant with cruciform flowers, usually cultivated in gar-dens—part used, The root—sens. prop. Acrid, penetrating, with verypungent effluvia—med. virt. Stimulant, diuretic—mode of exhib. In-fusion with mustard seed, against dropsical and paialytic complaints;also in the compound spirit of horse-radish. According to the late Dr.Withering, an infusion of scraped horse-radish in milk makes one ofthe safest and best cosmetics.
Hyssop, Hedge: A low plant with irregular flowers, grown in gardens—part used, The herb—sens. prop. Bitter, nauseous—med. virt.Diuretic, violently emetic, and cathartic—mode of exhib. Two to sixor eight grains of the powdered root, beginning with a very small dose,which may be gradually increased, against dropsy and worms. It i«