Culpeper's complete herbal, and English physician wherein several hundred herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult properties ... To which are added, rules ... receipts, selected from the author's Last legacies ... To which is annexed, The British florist. Or Flower garden displayed .... / [Nicholas Culpeper].

  • Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Culpeper's complete herbal, and English physician wherein several hundred herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult properties ... To which are added, rules ... receipts, selected from the author's Last legacies ... To which is annexed, The British florist. Or Flower garden displayed .... / [Nicholas Culpeper]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/362 (page 7)
    or feet; if you put to the deletion some honey and a little burnt alum, it is excellent good to gargle any sore mouth or throat, and to wash the sores and ulcers in the privy parts of man or woman ; it speedily helpeth green wounds, being bruised and bound thereto. The juice of it boiled with a little honey and verdigrease, doth wonderfully cleanse fistulas, ulcers, and stayeth the spreading or eating of cancers and ulcers ; it helpeth the itch, scabs, wheals, and other breakings out in any part of the body. The juice of celandine, field daisies, and ground-ivy clarified, and a little fine sugar dissolved therein, and dropped into the eyes, is a sovereign reme- dy for all pains, redness, and watering of them ; as also for the pin and web, skins and films growing over the sight; it helpeth beasts, as well as men. The juice dropped into the ears doth wonderfully help the noise and singing of them, and helpeth the hearing which is decayed. It is good to tun up with new drink, for it will clarify it in a night, that it will be the fitter to be drank the next morning; or if any drink be thick with removing, or any other accident, it will do the like in a few hours. BLACK ALDER-TREE. Description. This tree seldom grows to any large size, but shoots out into many small branches, covered with a reddish-brown bark; it bears broad, roundish, but sharp-pointed leaves, of a bright green, and veined, about the bigness of the leaves of the pear-tree. The flowers are whitish, and grow on the younger branches, on the lower part next the trunk, several together, at the setting on of the leaves, small and white, and are succeeded by small round berries, about as big as juniper berries green at first, then red, and when ripe, black- ish ; full of a greenish juice, of a bitter taste, with two flat seeds in each berry. Place. This is rather a shrub than a tree. It is fre- quent in moist woods, and the berries are sometimes mixed amongst those of the buckthorn, by such as ga- ther them for sale. Time. It flowers in May, and the berries are ripe in September. Government and virtues. Black-berry bearing alder is a tree of Venus, and perhaps under the celestial sign Cancer. The inner rind is all that is used in medicine; this is yellow, and tinges the spittle like rhubarb. It purges serous and bilious humours, and is recommended for the dropsy and the jaundice. In Yorkshire they bruise the fresh bark in a mortar with vinegar, and ap- ply it outwardly for the itch, which it cures very safely. The best way to give it is in a decoction. Boil an ounce of the dried bark in a quart of water, and throw in at least two drachms of ginger, and a few caraway seeds: let the patient proportion the quantity to his strength, beginning with a small draught, and increasing it as he shall find occasion. The dried bark boiled with agrimony, wormwood, dodder, hops, and some fennel, with smal- lage, endive, and succory roots, and a considerable draught taken every morning for some time together, is very effectual against the dropsy and the jaundice, especially if some suitable medicine have been taken before. All this must be understood to be performed by the dried bark; for the fresh green bark taken in- wardly provokes strong vomitings, excites pain in the stomach, and gripings in the belly, yet mixed with the above, or other aromatics, and let stand, and settled two or three days, until the yellow colour is turned black, its operation is more gentle, strengthening the stomach, and procuring an appetite to eat. The out- ward bark possesses a contrary virtue; it binds the bo- dy, and is very good to lessen immoderate fluxes, but this also must be dried first, or it will prove hurtful. A decoction in vinegar cures scabs on the head, kills lice, eradicates humours and runnings in man or beast, by drying them up in a short time. It is singularly good to wash the teeth, to remove the pains in them, to fasten those that are loose, to cleanse them and keep them sound. The leaves are good fodder for kine, to make them give more milk; laid fresh on swellings, they ease the pain, dissolve them, and stay inflamma- tions; placed under the bare feet of weary travellers, refreshes them, and eases the galling heat; gathered with the morning dew, and strewed about rooms pes- tered with fleas, they soon gather up the vermin, so that they may be swept out, and the room cleared. If, in the spring, you use the herb before mentioned, and to an handful of each add another of elder-buds, and having bruised them all, boil them in a gallon of ^ood table or home-brewed beer, when it is new; and after boiling half an hour, add three gallons more, and let them work together, you will have an excellent spring drink; half a pint of which, every morning fast- ing, is a good and gentle purge to consume the phleg- matic quality the winter has left behind, to keep the body open, and to consume those evil humours which the heat of summer will readily stir up.