MUSTARD-Seed, is one of the strongest of the pungent, stimulating, diuretic medicines, that operate without exciting much heat. It is sometimes taken unbruised, to the quantity of a spoonful at a time, in paralytic, cachectic, and serous disorders. It is applied also as an external stimulant, to benumbed and paralytic limbs; to parts affected with fixed rheumatic pains; and to the soles of the feet, in the low stage of acute diseases, for raising the pulse; in this intention, a mixture of equal parts of the powdered seeds and crumbs of bread, with the addition sometimes of a little bruised garlic, are made into a cataplasm with a sufficient quantity of vinegar. See SINAPI.
Mustard-feed yields upon expression, a considerable quantity of oil, which is by some recommended externally against rheumatisms and palsies, though it has nothing of that quality by which the feeds themselves prove useful in those disorders; the oil being mild and insipid as that of olives, and the pungency of the feed remaining entire in the cake left after expression; nor is any considerable part of the pungent matter extracted by rectified spirit. The bruised seeds give out readily to water nearly the whole of their active matter: added to boiling milk they curdle it, and communicate their pungency to the whey. The powder of mustard-feed may be made into the consistence of a loch with warm water, in which a little sea-salt has been dissolved. Of this a common spoonful, sometimes two, diluted with tepid water, are given on an empty stomach; it operates as well as an emetic, and proves an excellent remedy in most nervous disorders, according to Dr Monro, in Med. Ess. Edinb. vol. ii. art. 19. p. 303. note.