WART-WORT, OR WART-WEED.
This name has been commonly applied to the Petty Spurge, or to the Sun Spurge, a familiar little weed growing abundantly in English gardens, with umbels of a golden green colour which “turn towards the sun.” Its stem and leaves yield, when wounded, an acrid milky juice which is popularly applied for destroying warts, and corns. But our Greater Celandine (see page 92) or Swallow-wort is better known abroad as the Wart-wort: and its sap is widely given in Russia for the cure, not only of [603] warts, but likewise of cancerous outgrowths, whether occurring on the skin surface, or assailing membranes inside the body. Conclusive evidence has been adduced of cancerous disease within the gullet and the stomach–as well as on the external skin–being healed by this herb. Its sap, or juice, contains chemically, “chelidonine,” and “sanguinarine,” which latter principle (obtained heretofore from the Canadian “blood root”), is of long established repute for repressing fungoid granulations of indolent ulcers, when powdered over them, and of quickly advancing their cure. Each principle exercises a narcotic influence on the nervous system, and will, thereby, relieve spasmodic coughs. Healthy provers have taken the fresh juice of the Greater Celandine in doses of from twenty to two hundred drops, at repeated intervals; the results of the larger portions being drastic purgation, with persistent nervous torpor, and with an outbreak on the skin of irritating, sore, itching eruptions. In some of the provers active inflammatory congestion of the right lung ensued, with turgidity of the liver. The root beaten into a conserve with sugar will operate by stool, and by urine. For cancerous excrescences from five to ten drops of the fresh juice, or of the mother tincture (H.) should be given steadily three times a day, this quantity being reduced if it should move the bowels too freely. Some of the sap, or tincture, should be also used outwardly as a lotion, either by itself, or diluted with an equal quantity of cold water.
