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Barberry,
The Common Barberry (_Berberis_), which gives its name to a
special order of plants, grows wild as a shrub in our English
copses and hedges, particularly about Essex, being so called from
Berberin, a pearl oyster, because the leaves are glossy like the
inside of an oyster shell.
It is remarkable for the light colour of its bark, which
is yellow inside, and for its three-forked spines. Provincially
it is also termed Pipperidge-bush, from "pepin," a pip,
and "rouge," red, as descriptive of its small scarlet juiceless fruit,
of which the active chemical principles, as well as of the bark, are
"berberin" and "oxyacanthin."
The sparingly-produced juice of the berries is cooling
and astringent. It was formerly held in high esteem by the
Egyptians, when diluted as a drink, in pestilential fevers.
The inner, yellow bark, which has been long believed to
exercise a medicinal effect on the liver, because of its colour, is a
true biliary purgative. An infusion of this bark, made with boiling
water, is useful in jaundice from congestive liver, with furred
tongue, lowness of spirits, and yellow complexion; also for
swollen spleen from malarious exposure.
A medicinal tincture (H.) is made of the root-branches
and the root-bark, with spirit of wine; and if given three
or four times a day in doses of five drops with one
tablespoonful of cold water, it will admirably rouse the liver to
healthy and more vigorous action. Conversely the tincture
when of reduced strength will stay bilious diarrhoea.
British farmers dislike the Barberry shrub because, when
it grows in cornfields, the wheat near it is blighted,
even to the distance of two or three hundred yards.
This is because of a special fungus which is common to
the Barberry, and being carried by the wind reproduces
itself by its spores destructively on the ears of wheat, the
AEcidium Berberidis, which generates Puccinia.
Clusius setteth it down as a wonderful secret which he had from a
friend, "that if the yellow bark of Barberry be steeped in white
wine for three hours, and be afterwards drank, it will purge one
very marvellously."
The berries upon old Barberry shrubs are often stoneless, and this
is the best fruit for preserving or for making the jelly. They
contain malic and citric acids; and it is from these berries that the
delicious _confitures d'epine vinette_, for which Rouen is famous,
are commonly prepared. And the same berries are chosen in
England to furnish the kernel for a very nice sugar-plum.
The syrup of Barberries will make with water an excellent astringent
gargle for raw, irritable sore throat; likewise the jelly gives famous
relief for this catarrhal affection. It is prepared by boiling the
berries, when ripe, with an equal weight of sugar, and then
straining.
For an attack of colic because of gravel in the kidneys,
five drops of the tincture on sugar every five minutes will
promptly relieve, as likewise when albumen is found by analysis
in the urine.
A noted modern nostrum belauds the virtues of the Barberry as
specific against bile, heartburn, and the black jaundice, this being
a remedy which was "discovered after infinite pains by one who
had studied for thirty years by candle light for the good of his
countrymen." In Gerard's time at the village of Ivor, near
Colebrooke, most of the hedges consisted solely of Barberry
bushes.
The following is a good old receipt for making Barberry
jam:
Pick the fruit from the stalks, and bake it in an earthen pan;
then press it through a sieve with a wooden spoon. Having mixed equal
weights of the prepared fruit, and of powdered sugar, put these
together in pots, and cover the mixture up, setting them in a dry
place, and having sifted some powdered sugar over the top of each
pot.
Among the Italians the Barberry bears the name of Holy Thorn,
because thought to have formed part of the crown of thorns
made for our Saviour.
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Source: Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure, by William Thomas Fernie
Philadelphia:
Boericke & Tafel.
1897
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