MEDICINAL PART. The herb.
    Description. -- This is a most delicate and graceful fern, growing from twelve to fifteen inches high, with a slender, polished stalk. Frond pedate, with pinnate branches.
    History. -- Maidenhair is perennial, and grows throughout the United States in deep woods on moist, rich soil. The leaves are bitterish and somewhat aromatic, and part with their virtues upon being immersed in boiling water.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is refrigerant, expectorant, tonic, and subastringent. A decoction of the plant is most gratefully cooling in febrile diseases, and it is a great benefit in coughs, catarrh, hoarseness, influenza, asthma, pleurisy, etc. The decocton, or syrup, can be used freely.