An American plant named in honour of Lobel, found in woods and dry marshes. With the root of the lobelia syphilitica Lin. Sp. Pl. 1320, the American Indians cure the most virulent pox. Five or six of the plants are boiled in water, and the patient drinks as much as he can of this decoction, in the morning and during the day. It soon purges, and the strength of the decoction is increased or lessened as the patient can bear the evacuation. If any part is sore, it is to be washed with this decoction, and thus in two or three weeks a cure is performed. Every part of this plant abounds with a milky juice, and has a rank smell. The root, which is the part preferred in medicine, in taste resembles tobacco, and sometimes excites vomiting. A handful of it, dried, is boiled in twelve pints of distilled water, till they are reduced to eight. The patient begins with half a pint, morning and evening, then more frequently if the purgative effect is not too violent. Should it be so, the medicine must be omitted for three or four days, and then again taken, till the cure is completed. The ulcers are to be washed with a decoction of the root, and if deep and foul, sprinkled with the powder of the inner bark of the ceanothus Americanus Lin. Sp. Pl. 284. We owe this description to Sir W. Johnson's influence, who received it from the American Indians. The practitioners of their country, however, do not repose in it much confidence, and seem to think its purgative effect the most striking.