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.

    37/500 (page 19)
    inflammations arising from wounds, and the swelliiig of w'omen’s breasts caused by the curdling of their milk, and represseth their milk; Elour of beans and fenugreek mixed with honey, and applied to felons, boils, bruises, or blue marks by blows, or the imposthumes in the kernels of the ears, helpeth them all, and with rose leaves, frankincense and the white of an egg, being applied to the eyes, helpeth them that are swollen or do water, or have received any blow upon them, if used with wine. If a bean be parted in two, the skin being taken away, and laid on the place where the leech hath been set that bleedeth too much, stayeth the bleeding. Bean flour boiled to a poul- tice with wine and vinegar, and some oil put thereto, eases both pains and swelling of the cods. The husks boiled in water to the consumption of a third part thereof, stayeth a lask ; and the ashes of the husks, made up with old hog's grease, helps the old pains, contusions, and wounds of the sinews, the sciatica and gout. The field beans have all the aforementioned virtues as the garden beans. Beans eaten are extremely windy meat; but if after the Dutch fashion, when they are half boiled you husk them and then stew them, (I cannot tell you how, for I never was cook in all my life) they are wholesome food. FRENCH BEANS. Hescript.'] Th i s French or Kidney Bean ariseth at first but with one stalk, which afterwards divides itself into many arms or branches, but all so weak that if they be not sustained with sticks or poles, they will be fruitless upon the ground. At several places of these branches grow foot stalks, each with three broad round and pointed green leaves at the end of them; towards the top comes forth divers flowers made like to pease blossoms, of the same colour for the most part that the fruit will be of; that (•5-) is to say, white, yellow, red, blackish, or of a deeper purple, but white is the most usual; after which come long and slender flat cods, some crooked, some strait, with a string running down the back thereof, wherein is flattish round fruit made like a kidney; the root long, spreads with many strings an- nexed to it, and perishes every year. There is another sort of French beans commonly growing with us in this land, which is called the Scarlet flower Bean. This rises with sundry branches as the other, but runs higher, to the length of hop- poles, about which they grow twining, but turning contrary to the sun, having foot- stalks with three leaves on each, as on the other; the flowers also are like the other, and of a most orient scarlet colour. The Beans are larger than the ordinary kind, of a dead purple colour turning black when ripe and dry ; the root perishes in Winter. Government and virtues.^ These also be- long to Dame Venus, and being dried and beat to powder, are as great strengtheners of the kidneys as any. are; neither is there a better remedy than it; a dram at a time taken in white wine to prevent the stone, or to cleanse the kidneys of gravel or stoppage. The ordinary French Beans are of an easy digestion; they move the belly, provoke urine, enlarge the breast that that is straight- ened with shortness of breath, engender sperm, and incite to venery. And the scar- let coloured Beans, in regard of the glori- ous beauty of their colour, being set near a quickset hedge, will bravely adorn the same, by climbing up thereon^ so that they may be discerned a great way, not without admiration of the beholders at a distance. But they will go near to kill the quicksets by cloathing them in scarlet. LADIES BED-STRAW. I Besides the common name above writ- I ten, it is called Cheese-Rennet, because it \ jDerforms the same office, as also Gallion, • G