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Sciatica-Wort, or Sciatica Grass

Description. The lower leaves of this herb are two or three inches long, and about half an inch broad, indented pretty deeply about the edges, and growing on long footstalks. The upper leaves are long and narrow, not cut in, and set on without footstalks; it rises to be a foot high, or more, branched, and bearing on the top spikes of small white four-leaved flowers, succeeded by round seed-vessels, containing small reddish seed; the root is woody and fibrous, perishing every year after ripening seed.

Place. I grows wild in the warmer countries, but with us only in gardens. Time. It flowers in June.

Government and virtues. It is a very useful Saturnine plant, and a blessing to the rheumatic. The old Greek physicians speak highly of its virtues, but they are deemed inferior to the sciatica cress, to which this has some distant resemblance. Our country people bruise a quantity of the root in a mortar, and mix it with hog's lard; this ointment they rub on, and apply with great success to the parts affected; but it is not so much regarded as it deserves in the common course of practice.