COMMON NAMES. Yellow-wood, Toothache-bush, etc.
    MEDICINAL PARTS. The bark and berries.
    Description. -- This indigenous shrub has a stem ten or twelve feet high, with alternate branches, which are armed with strong conical prickles. The leaves are alternate and pinnate, leaflets ovate and acute. The flowers are small, greenish, and appear before the leaves. The fruit is an oval capsule, varying from green to red in color.
    History. -- It is a native of North America, growing from Canada to Virginia, and west to the Mississippi, in woods, thickets, and on river banks, and flowering in April and May. The medicinal parts render their virtues to water and alcohol. Xanthoxyline is its active principle.
    Properties and Uses. -- Prickly Ash is stimulant, tonic, alterative, and sialagogue. It is used as a stimulant in languid states of the system, and as a sialagogue in paralysis of the tongue and mouth. It is highly beneficial in chronic rheumatism, colic, syphilis, hepatic derangements, and wherever a stimulating alterative is required. Dose of the powder, from ten to thirty grains, three times a day. The berries are stimulant, carminative, and antispasmodic, acting especially on the mucous tissues.
    The Aralia Spinosa, or Southern Prickly Ash, differs from Xanthoxylum, both in botanical character and medicinal virtues.