Culpeper's complete herbal : with nearly four hundred medicines made from English herbs ...

  • Culpeper Nicholas, 1616-1654.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Culpeper's complete herbal : with nearly four hundred medicines made from English herbs ... Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    from the Greek name barrakion; crowfoot, goldknobs, gold cups, king's knobs, buffiners, troilflowers, polts, locket goulions, and butter flowers. Abundance are the sorts of this herb, that to de- scribe them all would tire the patience of Socrates himself; but because I have not yet attained to the spirits of Socrates, I shall but describe the most usual. Descrip.—The most common crowfoot hath many thin green leaves cut into divers parts, in taste biting and sharp, biting and blistering the tongue; it bears many flowers of a bright resplendent yellow colour; I do not remember that I ever saw any thing yellower —virgins in ancient times used to make powder of them to furrow bride-beds—after which flowers come small heads, some spiked and rugged like a pine apple. Place.—They grow very common every where; unless you turn your head into a hedge you cannot but see them as you walk. Time.—They flower in May and June, even until September. Government and Virtues.—This fiery and hot- spirited herb of Mars is no way fit to be given inwardly, but an ointment of the leaves or flowers will draw a blister, and may be so fitly applied to the nape of the neck to draw back rheum from the eyes. The herb being bruised and mixed with a little mustard, draws a blister as well, and as perfectly as cantharides, and with far less danger to the vessels of urine, which cantharides naturally delight to wrong. I knew the herb once applied to a pestilential rising that was fallen down, and it saved life even beyond hope: it. were good to keep an ointment and plaister of it, if it were but for that. CUCKOYV-PINT. It is called alronjanus, barba-aron, calve’s foot, ramp, starchwort, cuekow-pintle, priest’s-pintle, and wake robin, Dcscrip.—This shooteth forth three, four, or five