The British herbal and family physician. : To which is added, a dispensatory for the use of private families / by Nicholas Culpepper.
- Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616-1654. English physitian
- Date:
- 1834
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The British herbal and family physician. : To which is added, a dispensatory for the use of private families / by Nicholas Culpepper. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![If in the spring-time you use the herbs before mentioned, and will take but a handful of each of them, and to them add an handful of elder buds, and having bruised them all, boil them in a gallon of ordinary beer, when it is new; and having boiled them half an hour, add to this three gallons more, and let them work together, and drink a draught of it every morning, halt a pint, or thereabouts, it is an excellent purge for the spring, to consume the phlegmatic quality the winter hath left behind it, and withal to keep your body in health, and consume those evil humours which the heat of summer will readily stir up. Esteem it as a jeweL THE COMMON ALDER-TREE. Descript.] Groweth to a reasonable height, and spreads much if it like the place. It is so generally well known unto country people, that I conceive it needless to tell that which is no news. Place and Time.] It delighteth to grow in moist w’oods and watery places: flowering in April or May, and yielding ripe seed in September. Government and Use.] It is a tree under the dominion of Venus and of some watery sign or other, I suppose Pisces; and there- fore the decoction, or distilled water of the leaves, is excellent against burnings and inflammations, either with wounds or with- out, to bathe the place grieved with, and especially for that in- flammation in the breast, which the vulgar call an ague. If you cannot get the leaves (as in winter it is impossible) make use of the bark in the same manner. The leaves and bark of the alder-tree are cooling, drying, and binding. The fresh leaves laid upon swellings dissolve them, and stay the inflammations. The leaves put under the bare feet galled with travelling, are a great refreshing to them. The said leaves gathered while the morning dew is on them, and brought into a chamber troubled with the fleas, will gather them thereun-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24930775_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
