Considering how generally disseminated an antidepressant could be
expected to have been had this property been appreciated, that the rarity of
that use in the British Isles records is real seems to be borne out by the con-
siderable range of still further purposes for which St John’s-wort has been
employed. The most salient of those is for healing fractures and sprains—in
the manner of comfrey (Symphytum officinale) and royal fern (Osmunda
regalis);Hypericum perforatum has been used for those in Somerset,^16 H. pul-
chrum in the Highlands^17 and, mixed with goldenrod and heath speedwell, on
Skye.^18 When cut and bruised, a resin-like substance can be extracted and
has been applied as a protective coating to various afflictions as well: to burns
in Somerset,^19 to bed sores in Norfolk^20 and the Westmoreland Pennines.^21
Probably related is its use for warts (Norfolk,^22 Wiltshire^23 ). More surprising
is the plants’ serving as an infusion for coughs or catarrh in Somerset^24 and
Fife,^25 and even more, in the first of those counties to make hair grow.^26
In Ireland the main emphasis seems again to have been on the astrin-
gency. In 1697 John Ray was informed by a medical correspondent in Tip-
perary that under the Gaelic name birin yarragh,‘dysentery herb’, a plant the
latter was able to identify as Hypericum elodes was employed by the native
Irish as a cure for diarrhoea. The correspondent had experimented with it
himself, boiling it in milk, and claimed to have found it a highly effective
astringent for fluxes in general.^27 Hypericum elodes,specifically, has also been
recorded in use for diarrhoea in cows in Donegal,^28 so it may well be that it
has a stronger potency in that direction than its British and Irish relatives. On
the other hand, the member of the genus employed to staunch bleeding from
wounds in Londonderry was identified by a botanist as another wet-ground
species,H. tetrapterum.^29 Two further, but vague, Irish records of uses of St
John’s-wort in the collective sense have been to cure ‘gravel’ in ‘Ulster’^30 and
jaundice in some part of the country left unspecified.^31
Tiliaceae
Tilia cordata Miller
Europe, western Asia; introduced into North America
Tilia ×europaea Linnaeus
lime
horticultural
An infusion of lime-tree flowers has been drunk for insomnia in Somerset^32
and for a headache in Norfolk.^33 Presumably the two native species,Tilia cor-
106 Hypericum perforatum