COMMON NAME. Masterwort.
    MEDICINAL PART. Root, herb, and seed.
    Description. -- This plant is five or six feet high. The root has a purple color; leaves ternate, with large petioles; calyx five-toothed, with equal petals, and the fruit a nut.
    History. -- The plant is perennial, and grows in fields and damp places, developing greenish-white flowers from May to August. The plant has a powerful, peculiar, but not unpleasant odor, a sweet taste, afterwards pungent; but in drying it loses much of these qualities.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is aromatic, stimulant, carminative, diaphoretic, expectorant, diuretic, and emmenagogue. It is used in flatulent colic and heart-burn. It is serviceable in diseases of the urinary organs. The A. Archangelica, or Archangel, may be substituted for this.
    Dose. -- Decoction, two to four ounces; powder, thirty to sixty grains.