Liatris.

The root of Liatris spicata.

Dose.—Of the powdered Liatris from one-half to one drachm, taken in some warm infusion. Of an infusion of one ounce to a pint ot boiling water, macerated for two hours, from one to four ounces.

Therapeutic Action.—Liatris is diuretic, stimulant, diaphoretic, tonic and emmenagogue. It is a mild, and yet energetic, stimulating diaphoretic, and very valuable whenever an agent of this character is indicated. It is also an excellent stimulant, appropriate in all cases where a carminative and excitant are required, as in the debility of the digestive organs, colic, spasm of the bowels, etc. It is a useful and even superior stimulating diaphoretic, and may be employed in the advanced stages of fever, and where there is coldness of the surface and want of action in the cutaneous capillaries. Associated with these valuable properties are its tonic powers.

Some regard the Liatris as an emmenagogue and deobstruent, and it may possess such properties. Its supposed emmenagogue powers may depend upon its general excitant influence upon the whole system, or upon the secretions in particular, or its direct action upon the urinary organs may be sufficient to account for its sympathetic action upon the uterus. It is frequently recommended in scrofula, pains in the chest and after-pains, and is said to exert a salutary influence in all these cases.

The American Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 1898, was written by John M. Scudder, M.D.