GALIUM, in botany: A genus of the monogynia order, belonging to the tetrandria class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 47th order, Stellatae. The corolla is monopetalous and plain; and there are two roundish seeds. There are a great many species; of which the most remarkable are, the verum, or yellow lady's bed-straw; and the aperine, clivers, or goose-grass. The former has a firm, erect, brown, square, stem; the leaves generally eight in each whirl, linear, pointed, brittle, and often reflex; branches short, generally two from each joint, terminating in spikes of small yellow flowers. It grows commonly in dry ground, and on road sides. The flowers will coagulate boiling milk; and the best Cheshire cheese is said to be prepared with them. The French prescribe them in hysterical and epileptic cases. Boiled in alum-water, they tinge wool yellow. The roots dye a red not inferior to madder; for which purpose they are used in the island of Jura. In the Edinburgh medical commentaries we have accounts of some violent scrofulous complaints being cured by the juice of this plant.—Sheep and goats eat the plant; horses and swine refuse it; cows are not fond of it. The aperine, or clivers, has a square, very rough, jointed, very weak stem, two, three, or four feet long, and adhesive: the branches are opposite; the joints hairy at the base: the leaves, consisting of eight or ten at each joint, are narrow, pointed, above rough, beneath smooth, and carinated: the seeds are rough; flowers white, small, few on slender foot-stalks on the tops of the branches. It is frequent in fields by the sides of hedges, &c. The expressed juice of this plant taken internally, and the bruised leaves applied by way of poultice, are said to have been used with success as a cure for the cancer. The effects being slow, though sure, the course, it is said, often requires to be continued for nine or ten months.
Gall, was generally given amongst the Jews, to persons suffering death under the execution of the law, to make them less sensible of their pain: but gall and myrrh are supposed to have been the same thing; because at our Saviour's crucifixion, St Matthew says, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with myrrh; whereas St Mark calls it wine mingled with myrrh: The truth of the matter perhaps is, that they distinguished every thing bitter by the name of gall. The Greeks and Romans also gave such a mixture to persons suffering a death of torture.
A great number of experiments have been made upon the gall of different animals, but few conclusions can be drawn from them with any certainty. Dr Percival, however, hath shown, that putrid bile may be perfectly corrected and sweetened by an admixture of the vegetable acids, vinegar, and juice of lemons. These, he observes, have this effect much more completely than the mineral ones: and hence, he thinks, arises the great usefulness of the vegetable acids in autumnal diseases; which are always attended with a putrescent disposition of the bile, owing to the heat of the preceding summer. On this occasion he takes notice of a common mistake among physicians, who frequently prescribe elixir of vitriol in those diseases, where vinegar or lemon juice would be much more effectual.
From this effect of acids on the gall, he also thinks, we may see why the immoderate use of acids is so pernicious to digestion. It is necessary to health that the gall should be in some degree acrid and alkaline: but as acids have the property of rendering it perfectly mild and sweet, they must be proportionably pernicious to the due concoction and assimilation of the food; which without an acrid bile cannot be accomplished. Hence the body is deprived of its proper nourishment and support, the blood becomes vapid and watery, and a fatal cachexy unavoidably ensues. This hath been the case with many unfortunate persons, who, in order to reduce their excessive corpulency, have indulged themselves in the too free use of vinegar. From the mild state of the gall in young children, Dr Percival also thinks it is, that they are so much troubled with acidities.