rinaria_, since the herb has been found
efficacious in cases of strangury, or difficult making of water.

The White Horehound (_Marrubium_) is a common square-stemmed
herb of the Labiate order, growing in waste places, and of
popular use for coughs and colds, whether in a medicinal form, or as
a candied sweetmeat. Its botanical title is of Hebrew derivation,
from _marrob_, a bitter juice. The plant is distinguished by the
white woolly down on its stems, by its wrinkled leaves, and small
white flowers.

It has a musky odour, and a bitter taste, being a much esteemed
Herbal Simple, but very often spuriously imitated. It affords
chemically a fragrant volatile oil, a bitter extractive "marrubin,"
and gallic acid.

As a homely remedy it is especially given for coughs accompanied
with abundant thick expectoration, and for chronic asthma. In
Norfolk scarcely a cottage garden can be found without its
Horehound corner; and Horehound beer is much drunk there by the
natives. Horehound tea may be made by pouring boiling water on
the fresh leaves, an ounce to a pint, and sweetening this with honey:
then a wineglassful should be taken three or four times in the day.
Or from two to three teaspoonfuls of the expressed juice of the herb
may be given for a dose.

Candied Horehound is best made from the fresh plant by boiling it
down until the juice is extracted, [268] and then adding sugar before
boiling this again until it has become thick enough of consistence to
pour into a paper case, and to be cut into squares when cool. Gerard
said: "Syrup made from the greene fresh leaves and sugar is a most
singular remedy against the cough and wheezing of the lungs. It
doth wonderfully, and above credit, ease such as have been long
sicke of any consumption of the lungs; as hath been often proved by
the learned physicians of our London College."

When given in full doses, an infusion of the herb is laxative. If the
plant be put in new milk and set in a place pestered with flies, it
will speedily kill them all. And according to Columella, the Horehound
is a serviceable remedy against the Cankerworm in trees: _Profuit et
plantis latices infundere amaros marrubii_.

The Marrubium was called by the Egyptian Priests the "Seed of
Horus" or "the Bull's Blood" and "the Eye of the Star." It was a
principal remedy in the Negro Caesar's Antidote for vegetable
poisons.

The Black Horehound (_Ballota nigra_), so called from its dark
purple-coloured