SALVIA OFFICINALIS

GARDEN SAGE

Description:  Natural Order, Labiatae.  This is the well known garden plant, perennial and shrubby, with grayish-looking ovate-lanceolate and rugose leaves, cultivated everywhere as a pot herb.   Calyx two-lipped, corolla two-lipped and blue, stamens two.

Properties and Uses: The leaves of sage are of a peculiar and pleasant aroma, due to a full quantity of volatile oil.  They yield a considerable portion of their properties to lukewarm water, and make an infusion that is a soothing and diffusive drink, relaxant  and moderately stimulant, and which allays nausea and induces a gentle perspiration.  It is a good family remedy in measles, recent colds, quinsy, and similar maladies; though it is usually ‘rendered worthless for such uses by being infused till a bitterish and astringent principle is obtained.  The latter infusion is a mild tonic and astringent, of use as a gargle in quinsy and other sore throats, and reputed of some service in spermatorrhea.  Used cold, it may be given in the colliquative sweats of hectic and of typhus; also in the diarrhea of measles. For sweating and nervine purposes, half an ounce of the leaves may be infused for ten minutes in a pint of warm (not boiling) water, strained, and given warm in doses of two fluid ounces or more every hour.  Used cold, it frequently acts upon the kidneys.  For tonic and astringing purposes, an ounce of the leaves may be infused in a pint of boiling water, in a covered vessel, for an hour, and used freely as a gargle.   A drachm of alum and two ounces of honey are commonly added to a pint of this infusion for gargling.  Rafinesque says an application of the leaves will diminish the flow of milk.