The Universal Herbal: Arbutus Uva Ursi; Trailing Arbutus, or Bearberry.

The Universal Herbal;
or botanical, medical and agricultural dictonary.
Containing an account of All the known Plants in the World, arranged according to the Linnean system. Specifying the uses to which they are or may be applied, whether as food, as medicine, or in the arts and manufactures.
With the best methods of propagation, and the most recent agricultural improvements.
collected from indisputable Authorities.
Adapted to the use of the farmer - the gardener - the husbandman - the botanist - the florist - and country housekeepers in general.
By Thomas Green.
Vol. I
Liverpool.
Printed at the Caxton Press by Henri Fisher.
Printer in Ordinary to His Majesty.
1824Stems procumbent; leaves quite entire. — This shrub abounds in most parts of the continent, and in heathy, mountainous, and rocky places, throughout the highlands; also, near Hexham, in Northumberland. The leaves have been greatly ce lebrated as a remedy in stony and gravelly complaints. The dose is half a drachm of the powder of the leaves, every morning, or twice or thrice daily. De Haen relates, after great experience of this medicine in the hospital of Vienna, that suppurations, though obstinate and of long continuance, in the kidneys, ureter, bladder, urethra, scrotum, and perinaeum, where there was no venereal taint, nor marks of calculi, were in general completely cured by it; that even of those who had a manifest calculus, several found permanent relief, so that long after the medicine had been left off, they continued free from pain or inconvenience in making water, though the catheter shewed that the calculus still remained: that others, who seemed to be cured, relapsed on leaving off the medicine, and were several times successively relieved by again repeating its use; while others obtained from it only temporary and precarious relief, the complaints being often as severe during the operation of the medicine as when it was not used. The trials made of it in this country have not answered the general ex pectation. Some have had their complaints entirely removed, others have thought them aggravated by it. But though it frequently fails of performing a cure in those dreadful maladies, stone, gravel, &c. it many times alleviates the symptoms, and procures intervals of ease when all other means are ineffectual; which is a matter of no small moment, and certainly entitles it to some notice. It is probably not superior upon the whole to other vegetable astringents, some of which The have long been successfully used by the country people in gravelly complaints, although they are not noticed by medical practitioners. Whatever may be the ultimate decision as to its medical properties, the whole plant is certainly very serviceable in dyeing an ash-colour, but particularly in tanning leather. In this view it well deserves attention in those countries, the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland for instance, where whole mountains are covered with this trailing shrub, and they have scarcely timber sufficient for their occonomical purposes. The berries are food for grouse and other game.