Culpepper's [sic] family physician : the English physician enlarged, containing 300 medicines, made of American herbs / revised, corrected, and enlarged by James Scammon.
- Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654.
- Date:
- 1824
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Culpepper's [sic] family physician : the English physician enlarged, containing 300 medicines, made of American herbs / revised, corrected, and enlarged by James Scammon. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![purple in the bottom of the flower, with a small point of the same colour in the middle, each of them standing in a hard close husk, which after the flowers are past, groweth very like the husk of Asarabacca, and somewhat sharp at the top points, wherein is contained much small seed, very like Poppy-seed, but of a dusky, greyish colour. The root is great, white and thick, branching forth divers ways under ground, so like a Parsnip root (but that it is not so white) that it hath deceived others. The whole plant, more than the root, hath a very heavy, ill, soporiferous smell, some- what offensive. Place.] It commonly groweth by the way-sides, and under hedge-sides and walls. Time.] It flowereth in July, and springeth again yearly of its own seed. I doubt my authors mistook July for June, if not for May. Government and Virtues.] I wonder how astrologers could take on them to make this an herb of Jupiter; and yet Me- zaldus, a man of a penetrating brain, was of that opinion as well as the rest; the herb is indeed under the dominion of Sa- turn, and I prove it by this argument : All the herbs which delight most to grow in Saturnine places, are Saturnine herbs. But Henbane delights most to grow in Saturnine places, and whole cart loads of it may be found near the places where they empty the common Jacks, and scarce a ditch to be found without it growing by it. Ergo, it is an herb of Saturn. The leaves of Henbane do cool all hot inflammations in the eyes, or any other part of the body ; and are good to assuage all manner of swellings of the cods, or womens breasts, or elsewhere, if they be boiled in wine, and either applied them- selves, or the fomentation warm ; it also assuageth the pain of the gout, the sciatica, and other pains in the joints which arise from a hot cause. And applied with vinegar to the forehead and temples, helpeth the head-ache and want of sleep in hot fevers. The juice of the herb or seed, or the oil drawn from the seed, does the like. The oil of the seed is helpful for deafness, noise, and worms in the ears, being dropped therein; the juice of the herb or root doth the same. The decoction of the herb or seed, or both, killeth lice in man or beast. The fume of the dried herb, stalks and seed, burned, quickly healeth swellings chilblains or kibes in the hands or feet, by holding them in the fume thereof. The](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21112423_0150.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
