Lead wort.
Dentillaria sive plumbago.
A little plant, native of some parts of Europe, and kept in our gardens. It is two feet high; the stalks are slender, tough, and weak, hardly able to support themselves upright. The leaves are of a pale bluish green colour, oblong, not very broad, and they surround the stalk at the base. The flowers are red, they are singly, very small, but they stand in thick, oblong clusters, on the tops of the stalks, and each is succeeded by a single seed, which is very rough, and stands naked.
The dried root is to be used; a piece of it put into the mouth, fill it with a great quantity of rheum, and is often an almost instantaneous cure for the head-ache. It also cures the tooth-ache in the same manner as pellitory of Spain does: it is more hot and acrid than even that fiery root.
