This section is from the book "Dental Medicine. A Manual Of Dental Materia Medica And Therapeutics", by Ferdinand J. S. Gorgas. Also available from Amazon: Dental Medicine.
Calendula is a well-known garden plant, sometimes growing wild, with a peculiar and rather disagreeable odor, and a bitter, rough, saline taste. Both the leaves and the flowers are employed.
It is slightly stimulant, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, sudorific, and emmenagogue, but is seldom used internally. It contains a bitter principle known as calendulin.
Calendula has been employed in low forms of fevers, scrofula, jaundice, amenorrhea, etc. Externally it is used in the form of tincture - Tinctura Calendula - in its full strength or diluted, and is very serviceable in exercising a curative influence in the treatment of incised wounds and contusions, preventing inflammation and suppuration. Some writers consider it to be unequaled as a local application after surgical operations, as it promotes union by first intention. It is applied as a lotion on lint. It is also thought to be a preventive against gangrene and tetanus.
Of the tinctura of calendula,
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Calendula, in the form of tincture, is employed in dental practice as an application to wounded or irritated pulps of teeth, when partially exposed; also after the extraction of teeth; wounds about the mouth; and in such cases it proves a very useful remedy. A few drops added to a wine-glass of water form a soothing and efficient mouth-wash for the soreness resulting from the removal of salivary calculus: also useful in superficial inflammations of the mucous membrane of the mouth, etc.
 
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