COMMON NAMES. Blue scull-Cap, Side-Flowering Scull-Cap, Mad-Dogweed, and Hood-wort.
    MEDICINAL PART. The whole plant.
    Description. -- Scull-cap has a small, fibrous, yellow, perennial root, with an erect and very branching stem, from one to three feet in height. The leaves are on petioles about an inch long, opposite, thin, subcordate on the stem, ovate on branches, acuminate, acute, and coarsely serrate. The flowers are small, and of a pale-blue color.
    History. -- It is an indigenous herb, growing in damp places, meadows, ditches, and by the side of ponds, flowering in July and August. The whole plant is medicinal, and should be gathered while in flower, dried in the shade, and kept in well-closed tin vessels. Chemically it contains an essential oil, a yellowish-green fixed oil, chlorophyll, a volatile matter, albumen, an astringent principle, lignin, chloride of soda, salts of iron, silica, etc.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a valuable nervine, tonic, and antispasmodic, used in chorea, convulsions, fits, delirium tremens, and all nervous affections, supporting the nerves, quieting and strengthening the system. In delirium tremens an infusion drunk freely will soon produce a calm sleep. In all cases of nervous excitability, restlessness, or wakefulness, etc., it exerts beneficial results.
    Dose. -- Of the fluid extract, from half to a teaspoonful; of the tincture (four ounces scull-cap to a pint of diluted alcohol), one to two teaspoonfuls; of the infusion, a wineglassful, three times a day.