Culpeper's complete herbal ... To which are ... annexed his English physician enlarged, and Key to [Galen's Method of] physic ... to which is also added ... receipts selected from the author's Last legacy / Nicholas Culpeper.

  • Nicholas Culpeper
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Culpeper's complete herbal ... To which are ... annexed his English physician enlarged, and Key to [Galen's Method of] physic ... to which is also added ... receipts selected from the author's Last legacy / Nicholas Culpeper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/500 (page 16)
    16 THE COMPLETE HERBAL made with the juice of it and sugar (as you \ is young, putting to it some sugar and rose- shall be taught at the latter end of this | water, is good for a woman in child-bed, book) be kept in every gentlewoman's house | when the after-birth is not thoroughly to relieve the weak stomachs and sick bodies of their poor sickly neighbours; as also the herb kept dry in the house, that so with other convenient simples, you may make it into an electuary with honey, ac- cording as the disease is you shall be taught at the latter end of my book. The Arabian voided, and for their faintings upon or in their sore travel. The herb bruised and boiled in a little w ine and oil, and laid warm on a boil, will ripen it, and break it. BARBERRY. The shrub is so well known by every which Avicen also confimis. It is very good to help digestion, and open obstruc- tions of the brain, and hath so much purg- ing quality in it (saith Avicen) as to expel those melancholy vapours from the spirits and blood which are in the heart and physicians have extolled the virtues thereof \ boy and girl that has but attained to the to the skies; although the Greeks thought I age of seven years, that it needs no des- it not worth mentioning. Seraphio says, I cription. it causes the mind and heart to become | Government and virtues.'] Mars owns the merry, and revives the heart, faintings and | shrub, and presents it to the use of my swoonings, especially of such who are over- \ countrymen to purge their bodies of choler. taken in sleep, and drives away all trou- | The inner rind of the Barberry-tree boiled blesome cares and thoughts out of the mind, \ in white wine, and a quarter of a pint drank arising from melancholy or black choler; | each morning, is an excellent remedy to cleanse the body of cholodc humours, and free it from such diseases as choler causes, such as scabs, itch, tetters, ringworms, yel- low jaundice, boils, &c. It is excellent for hot agues, burnings, scaldings, heat of the blood, heat of the liver, bloody flux ; arteries, although it cannot do so in other for the berries are as good as the bark, and parts of the body. Dioscorides says, j more pleasing: they get a man a good That the leaves steeped in wine, and the 1 stomach to his victuals, b} strengthening the wane drank, and the leaves externally ap- 1 attractive faculty which is under Mars, plied, is a remedy against the stings of a | The hair washed with the lye made of scorpion, and the bitings of mad, dogs ; \ the tree and water, will make it turn yellow, and commends the decoction thereof for | viz. of Mars' own colour. The fruit and women to bathe or sit in to procure their | rind of the shrub, the flowers of broom courses; it is good to wash aching teeth | and of heath, or furz, cleanse the body of therewith, and profitable for those that | choler by sympathy, as the flowers, leaves, have the bloody-flux. The leaves also, with J and bark of the peach-tree do by antipathy; a little nitre taken in drink, are good against | because these are under Mars, that under the surfeit of mushrooms, helps the griping | Venus, pains of the belly ; and being made into an \ M ^ ^ J S 4 ^ X T> XT electuary, it is good for them that cannot \ fetch their breii,th: Used with salt, it takes i away wens, kernels, or hard sw^ellings in the flesh or throat; it cleanses foul sores. and eases pains of the gout. It is for the liver and spleen. A tansy or caudle good The continual usefulness hereof hath made all in general so acfiuainted herewith, that it is altogether needless to describe it, several kinds hereof plentifully growing, being yearly sown in this land. The virtues made with eggs, and juice thereof while it | tliereof take as follow.