163.  Allium Porrum.  Leek.  The Root.  L.—­This participates of the virtues of garlic, from which it differs chiefly in being much weaker.  See the article allium.

164.  Allium sativum.  Garlic.  The Root.  L. E. D.—­This pungent root warms and stimulates the solids, and attenuates tenacious juices.  Hence in cold leucophelgmatic habits it proves a powerful expectorant, diuretic, and emmenagogue; and, if the patient is kept warm, sudorific.  In humoral asthmas, and catarrhous disorders of the breast, in some scurvies, flatulent colics, hysterical and other diseases proceeding from laxity of the solids, and cold sluggish indisposition of the fluids, it has generally good effects:  it has likewise been found serviceable in some hydropic cases.  Sydenham relates, that he has known the dropsy cured by the use of garlic alone; he recommends it chiefly as a warm strengthening medicine in the beginning of the disease.

Garlic made into an unguent with oils, &c. and applied externally, is said to resolve and discuss cold tumors, and has been by some greatly esteemed in cutaneous diseases.  It has likewise sometimes been employed as a repellent.  Sydenham assures us, that among all the substances which occasion a derivation or revulsion from the head, none operate more powerfully than garlic applied to the soles of the feet:  hence he was led to make use of it in the confluent small-pox about the eighth day, after the face began to swell; the root cut in pieces, and tied in a linen cloth, was applied to the soles, and renewed once a day till all danger was over.

165.  Allium Cepa.  Onion.  The Root.  D.—­These roots are considered rather as articles of food than of medicine:  they are supposed to afford little or no nourishment, and when eaten liberally they produce flatulencies, occasion thirst, headachs, and turbulent dreams:  in cold phlegmatic habits, where viscid mucus abounds, they doubtless have their use; as by their stimulating quality they tend to excite appetite, attenuate thick juices, and promote their expulsion:  by some they are strongly recommended in suppressions of urine and in dropsies.  The chief medicinal use of onions in the present practice is in external applications, as a cataplasm for suppurating tumours, &c.

166.  Althaea officinalis.  Marsh-mallow.  The Leaves and Root.  L.—­This plant has the general virtues of an emollient medicine; and proves serviceable in a thin acrimonious state of the juices, and where the natural mucus of the intestines is abraded.  It is chiefly recommended in sharp defluxions upon the lungs, hoarseness, dysenteries, and likewise in nephritic and calculous complaints; not, as some have supposed, that this medicine has any peculiar power of dissolving or expelling the calculus; but as, by lubricating and relaxing the vessels, it procures a more free and easy passage.  Althaea root is sometimes employed externally for softening and maturing hard tumours:  chewed, it is said to give ease in difficult dentition of children.