MEDICINAL USES OF ASPARAGUS.This plant not only acts as a wholesome and nutritious vegetable, but also as a diuretic, aperient, and deobstruent.

The water when drunk has a diuretic, diaphoretic, and expectorant action; the bath, by its general and local stimulating properties, cleanses foul ulcers,... promotes the exfoliation of carious portions of bone and subsequent cicatrisation, and frequently causes foreign bodies which have been long imbedded ... to make their way to the surface."

The water principally contains sulphate of lime with a small proportion of carbonate of iron: its action is diuretic and laxative.

When drunk the water has a tonic and diuretic effect.

The water has emollient and sedative properties, slightly diuretic, and is especially useful in diseases of the skin and nerves.

It is tonic in its action, but diuretic and purgative as well, and is used efficaciously in liver complaints, dyspepsia, neuralgia, and nervous irritability.

The water is largely diuretic in its action, having at the same time a tonic and anti-spasmodic effect.

This liquor is exceedingly pleasant, and of a diuretic quality; is exhilarating to the spirits, and even intoxicating to weak heads.

Diuretics, or medicines to procure urine, are prescribed by some in this kind, hot and cold: hot where the heat of the liver doth not forbid; cold where the heat of the liver is very great: amongst hot are parsley roots, lovage, fennel, &c.: cold, melon seeds, &c., with whey of goat's milk, which is the common conveyer.

" Aetius, Vidus Vidius, Mercurialis, Fuchsius, recommend diuretics, or such things as provoke urine, as aniseeds, dill, fennel, germander, ground pine, sodden in water, or drunk in powder: and yet P. Bayerus is against them: and so is Hollerius; "All melancholy men" (saith he) "must avoid such things as provoke urine, because by them the subtile or thinnest is evacuated, the thicker matter remains.

Cream of tartar with sulphur is an excellent derivative, being both diuretic and diaphoretic, but it must not be given in doses large enough to purge.

A series of diuretics was next tried, in order to establish whether they operated in the way of stimulus centrally on the heart or peripherally on the renal cells.

The asparagus is remarkable as containing a crystalline alkaloid called asparagin, which is thought to possess diuretic properties.

Hence in cold leucophelgmatic habits it proves a powerful expectorant, diuretic, and emmenagogue; and, if the patient is kept warm, sudorific.

These roots are said to be aperient and diuretic, and have been employed in apozems to relieve nephritic pains, and obstructions of urine.

This plant, according to Bergius, is an emetic, errhine, diuretic, diaphoretic, emmenagogue; and from its supposed power of attenuating the blood, it has been esteemed so peculiarly efficacious in obviating the bad consequences occasioned by falls and bruises, that it obtained the appellation of Panacea Lapsorum.

L. E. D.Long ago it was employed as a diuretic; and, of late, it has been introduced in nervous diseases, as epilepsy, hysteria, choraea, asthma, &c. A dram or two of the powder is given twice or thrice a-day.

The Herb. E.Is antiseptic, attenuant, aperient, and diuretic, and is said to open obstructions of the viscera and remoter glands, without heating or irritating the system.

It is sometimes employed as a diuretic in dropsy.

E.The bitter juice of the leaf, mixed with an equal part of Madeira wine, is recommended in an ounce dose night and morning, as a powerful diuretic in dropsy.

Its diuretic effects, for which it is now so deservedly received into the Materia Medica, were entirely overlooked.

To this discovery Dr. Withering has an undoubted claim; and the numerous cures of dropsy related by him and other practitioners of established reputation, afford incontestable proofs of its diuretic powers, and of its practical importance in the cure of those diseases.

They are accounted aperient and diuretic, and have also been celebrated as aphrodisiac: their virtues, however, are too weak to admit them under the head of medicines.

More than twenty-four cases of dropsy are said by Collin to have been successfully treated, by employing an extract prepared from the expressed juice of this plant, which is stated not only to be powerfully diuretic, but, by attenuating the viscid humours, to promote all the secretions, and to remove visceral obstructions.

BLACK BRYONY.The root is one of the best diuretics known in medicine.