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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    Govern merit and Virtues.—AH dodders are under Saturn. Tell not me of physicians crying upepithy- inum, or that dodder which grows upon thyme, (most of which comes from Hemetius in Greece, or Hylda in Sicily, because those mountains abound with thy me) lie is a physician indeed that hath wit enough to choose his dodder, according to the nature of the dis- ease and humour peccant. We confess thyme is the hottest herb it usually grows upon, and therefore that which grows upon thyme is hotter than that which grows upon colder herbs; for it draws nourishment from what it grows upon, as well as from the earth where its root is, and thus you see old Saturn is wise enough to have two strings to his bow. This is ac- counted the most effectual for melancholy diseases, and to purge black or burnt choler, which is the cause of many diseases of the head and brain, as also for the trembling of the heart, faintings, and swoonings. It is helpful in all diseases and griefs of the spleen, and melancholy that arises from the windiness of the hypochondria. It purgeth also the reins or kidnies by urine; it openeth obstructions of the gall, whereby it profiteth them that have the jaundice; as also the leaves, the spleen ; purging the veins of choleric and phlegmatic humours, and helpeth children in agues, a little worm seed being added thereto. The other dodders do, as I said before, participate of the nature of those plants whereon they grow : as that which hath been found growing upon nettles in the west country, hath by experience been found very effectual to procure plenty of urine, where it hath been stopped or hindered. And so of the rest. Sympathy and antipathy are two hinges upon which the whole model ot physic turns ; and that physician who minds them not, is like a door off from the hooks, more like to do a man mischief than to secure him. Then all the diseases Saturn causes this helps by sympathy, and strengthens all the parts of the body he rules; such as be caused by Sol it helps by anti-