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

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.

45/500 (page 25)

$and thereby very good to be used in wound drinks ; as also to apply outwardly for the same purpose. But the latter Bird^s Foot is found by experience to break the stone in the back or kidneys, and drives them forth, if the decoction thereof be taken; and it wonderfully helps the rupture, be- ing taken inwardly, and outwardly applied to the place. All salts have best operations upon the stone, as ointments and plaisters have upon wounds; and therefore you may make a salt of this for the stone; the way how to do so may be found in my translation of the London Dispensatory ; and it may be I may give you it again in plainer terms at the latter end of this book. BISIIOP’s-WEED. Besides the common name Bishop- weed, it is usually known by the Greek name Ammi and Armnois; some call it ^Ethiopian Cummin-seed, and others Cum- min-royal, as also Herb William, and Bull- wort. • Desa^ipt.~\ Common Bishops-weed rises up with a round straight stalk, sometimes as liigh as a man, but usually three or four feet high, beset with divers small, long and somewhat broad leaves, cut in some places, and dented about the edges, growing one against another, of a dark green colour, having sundry branches on them, and at the top small umbels of white flowers, which turn into small round seeds little bigger than parsley seeds, of a quick hot scent and taste; the root is white and stringy; perish- ing yearly, and usually rises again on its own sowiii. O Piace.~\ It grows wild in many places in England and Wales, as between Green- hithc and Gravesend. Government and tirtnes,~\ It is hot and dry in the third degree, of a bitter taste, and somewhat sharp withal; it provokes lust to purpose; I suppose Venus owns it. It digests humours, provokes urine and women^’s courses, dissolved! wind, and being taken in wine it eases pain and griping in the bowels, and is good against the biting of serpents; it is used to good effects in those medicines which are given to hinder the poisonous operation of Cantharides, upon the passage of the urine: being mixed with honey and applied to black and blue marks, coming of blows or bruises, it takes them away; and being drank or outwardly applied, it abates an high colour, and makes it pale; and the fumes thereof taken with rosin or raisins, cleanses the mother. BISTORT, OR SXAKEWEED. It is called Snakeweed, English Serpen- tary, Dragon-wort, Ostcrick, and Passions. Descript.^ This has a thick short knobbed root, blackish without, and somewhat red- dish within, a little crooked or turned together, of a hard astringent taste, with divers black threads hanging there, from whence spring up every year divers leaves, standing upon long footstalks, being some- what broad and long like a dock leaf, and a little pointed at the ends, but that it is of a bluish green colour on the upper side, and of an ash-colour grey, and a little pur- plish underneath, with divers veins therein, from among which rise up divers small and slender stalks, two feet high, and almost naked and without leaves, or with a very few, and narrow, bearing a spikey bush of pale-coloured flowers; which being past, there abides small seed, like unto sorrel seed, but greater. There are other sorts of Bistort growing in this land, but smaller, both in height, root, and stalks, and especially in the leaves. The root blackish without, and somewhat whitish within; of an austere binding taste, as the former. P/ffce.] They grow in shadowy moist woods, and at the foot of hills, but are$