This is a shrub that I termed in my boyhood days a curse to the farmer and his fences. It flowers in myriads of little flowers, in a grand cluster, in the month of July, and they mature in little black berries about the size of coarse squirrel shot, from which elderberry wine is made. The bark and the flowers are the parts used in medicine. The old fogy idea of cutting the bark up and down, reversing its medical action, that is, vomiting and purging, is all bosh. It is all owing to the size of the dose, and not the way the bark is cut. In large doses it will vomit, and in smaller ones act as a gentle purgative. Any superstitious reader doubting this will be convinced of the fact by trying it on their own bodies. We obtain positive facts in reference to the action of medicine in different doses, by trying them on ourselves. I speak from experience, not book reading.

Medical properties and uses. -- Take the flowers and make a hot tea, and give it freely, and it will produce sweating; take the same amount and give it cold, and it will run off on the kidneys. This is the result of different degrees of temperature, and not the way you mash, cut, or gather the flowers. It, in the form of a cold tea, is a cooling diuretic. The bark can be given in such doses as will act quite severe on the bowels, and is a very important remedy in the treatment of many cases of dropsy, especially where it is the sequel or result of contagious or epidemic diseases. The inner bark fried in mutton tallow makes a fine healing salve for all excoriated surfaces, such as burns, scalds, abrasions, bruises, cuts and old sores. Dose, of the tea of the bark, for constipation, a tablespoonful three or four times a day. To produce vomiting give three or four swallows of the hot tea every five minutes until sickness or nausea occurs. It makes a fine salve for dressing flesh wounds on horses.