Bogbean

Description

A perennial herbaceous plant with a long branched thick jointed creeping rhizome. Leaves in the number of two, less often three, long-stemmed, blue-green, triplicate, with obovate leaves. Flowers are white-pink, funnel-shaped, pubescent inside, incised into five lanceolate pointed lobes. There are five stamens, a pistil with a two-lobed stigma and an upper ovary. The flowers are collected in an oblong thick brush. The fruit is a globose, multi-seeded box. Height 15 – 30 cm.

The part used. Leaves.

Chemical composition

The leaves contain the bitter glycosides menianthin and meliatin, the alkaloid gentian, the flavonoids rutin and hyperoside, tannins (up to 3%), fatty oil, choline, substances containing iodine, and vitamin C.

Application

The Marsh Buckbean was known as a medicinal plant in ancient times. Watch is widely used in folk medicine in various countries. Infusion of leaves excites the appetite, increases the secretion of the stomach and intestines, improves digestion, increases the formation of blood, raises the mood and performance, and improves the overall condition of the body. The infusion also has a choleretic, mild laxative, anthelmintic, anticonvulsant, analgesic, antiseptic and wound healing effect.

An aqueous infusion of leaves and an alcoholic tincture of them, in the form of drops, is used as a bitterness that excites the appetite and improves digestion. The infusion is also taken orally for diseases of the liver and gallbladder, malaria, colds, cough, suffocation, dropsy, edema, anemia, rheumatism, gout, scrofula, lichen, other skin diseases and various ulcers. The infusion is also drunk as a laxative, choleretic, anti-leafy and tonic, significantly improving the General condition of patients.

In German folk medicine, an infusion of leaves is used for lack of appetite, improper digestion, excessive stomach acidity, heartburn, cramps and colic of the stomach and intestines, bloating from the accumulation of gases, various feverish conditions, headaches and various pains on the nervous system, gout and rheumatic diseases. As an external antiseptic, decoction of leaves of trefoil is used for washing out old ulcers and wounds and for baths for various skin lesions and scrofula. Fresh or dry soaked leaves of watch have a wound-healing property. The watch is a part of appetitive, diuretic and choleretic charges.

Method of application

1. 5 g of watch leaves infuse in 1 cup of boiling water, strain. Take 1/4 cup before meals 4 times a day.

2. 1/2 teaspoon of leaves infuse for 8 hours in 2 cups of cold water. Take 1/2 cup 1/2 hour before meals 2 to 4 times a day.

3. Watch leaf powders take 1 g 2 times a day 1/2 hour before meals.