Plantago major - Plantain, Rib wort, Rib grass, Ripple grass
"CONSTITUENTS: The leaves contain a resin, citric and oxalic acids. There is no alkaloid or glucoside.
PREPARATIONS: Specific plantago. Dose: from one to five drops. The juice of the leaves is used, dissolved in alcohol.
Therapy: The remedy is of value in the internal treatment of all diseases of the blood. Scrofula, syphilis, specific or non-specific glandular disease, and mercurial poisoning. It is used in ulcerations of the mucous membrane, due to depraved conditions. It may be given in diarrhea, dysentery, the diarrhea of consumption, cholera infantum, and where there are longstanding hemorrhoids. It is also given in female disorders, attended with fluent discharges, and in hematuria, also in dysuria and some forms of passive hemorrhage. It would thus seem to possess marked astringent properties, as well as those of an alterative character. The older physicians ascribe an active influence to it, in the cure of the bites of venomous serpents, spiders, and poisonous insects. A simple but important influence is that exercised in tooth-ache. The juice on a piece of cotton applied to a tooth cavity, or to the sensitive pulp, has immediately controlled intractable cases of toothache. It seems to exercise a sedative influence upon pain in the nerves of the face, and relieves many cases of earache and tic-douloureux. In the nocturnal incontinence of urine, in young children, accompanied with a large flow of colorless urine, this agent has produced curative results in many cases. ..."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)