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.

48/500 (page 28)

$also stays the overflowing of the women’s ! reds, as the white Blites stay the whites } in women. It is an excellent secret; you cannot well fail in the use. They are all under the dominion of Venus. There is another sort of wild Blites like the other wild kinds, but have long and spikey heads of greenish seeds, seeming by the thick settino; together to be all seed. This sort the fishers are delighted with, and it is good and usual bait; for fishes will bite fast enough at them, if you liave wit enough to catch them when they bite. BORAGE AND BUGLOSS. These are so well known to the inhabi- tants in every garden that I hold it needless to describe them. • To these I may add a third sort, which is not so common, nor yet so well known, and therefore I ^hall give you its name and description. It is called Langiie de Boetif; but why then should they call one herb by the name of Bugloss, and another by the name Langue de Boeuf? it is some question to me, seeing one signifies Ox-tongue in Greek, and the other signifies the same in French. Descript.'] The leaves whereof are smaller than those of Bugloss but much rougher; the stalks rising up about a foot and a half high, and is most commonly of a red colour; the flowers stand in scaly rough heads, being composed of many small yellow | flowers, not much unlike to those of Dan- x delions, and the seed flieth away in down \ as that doth; you may easily know the | flowers by their taste, for they are very \ bitter. ; Place.] It grows wild in many places \ of this land, and may be plentifully found \ near London, as between Rotherhithe and j Deptford, by the ditch side. Its virtues * are held to be the same with Borage and J Bugloss, only this is somewhat hotter. | Time.] They flower in June and July, and the seed is ripe shortly after. Governme?it and virtues.] They are all three herbs of Jupiter and under Leo, all great cordials, and great strengtheners of nature. The leaves and roots are to very good purpose used in putrid and pestilential fevers, to defend the heart, and help to resist and expel the poison, or the venom of other creatures; the seed is of the like effects ; and the seed and leaves are good to increase milk in women’s breasts; the leaves, flowers, and seed, all or any of them, are good to expel pensiveness and melancholy; it helps to clarify the blood, and mitigate heat in fevers. The juice made into a syrup prevails much to all the purposes aforesaid, and is put with other cooling, opening and cleansing herbs to open obstructions, and help the yellow jaun- dice, and mixed with fumitory, to cool, cleanse, and temper the blood thereby; it helps the itch, ringwoniis and tetters, or other spreading scabs or sores. The flowers candied or made into a conserve, are help- ful in the former cases, but are ,chiefly (used as a cordial, and are good for those that are weak in long sickness, and to comfort the heart and spirits of those that are in a consumption, or troubled with often swoon- ings, or passions of the heart. The distilled Water is no less effectual to all the purposes aforesaid, and helps the redness and inflam- mations of the eyes, being washed there- with ; the herb dried is never used, but the green; yet the ashes thereof boiled in mead, or honied Avater, is available against the inflammations and ulcers in the mouth or throat, to gargle it therewith; the roots of Bugloss are effectual, being made into a licking electuary for the cough, and to condensate thick phlegm, and the rheuma- tic distillations upon the lungs. BLUE-BOTTLE. It is called Syanus, I suppose from the$