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.

57/500 (page 37)

$merit made of the same liquor, hogs-grease, nitre, and vinegar boiled together. The roots may be preserved with sugar, and taken fasting, or at other times, for the same purposes, and for consumptions, the stone, and the lask. The seed is much commended to break the stone, and cause it to be ex- pelled by urine, and is often used with other seeds and things to that purpose. CABBAGES AND COLEWORTS. ' I SHALL spare a labour in writing a des- cription of these, since almost every one that can but write at all, may describe them from his own knowledge, they being generally so well known, that descriptions arc altogether needless. P/crce.] They are generally planted in gardens. Time.~\ Their flower time is towards the middle, or end of July, and the Seed is ripe in August. Government and virtues.^ The Cabbages or Cole worts boiled gently in broth, and eaten, do open the body, but the second decoction doth bind the body. The juice thereof drank in wine, helps those that are bitten by an adder, and the decoction of the flowers brings down w'omen’s courses: Being taken ^yith honey, it recovers hoarse- ness, or loss of the voice. The often eating of them well boiled, helps those that are entering into a consumption. The pulp of the middle ribs of Coleworts boiled in al- mond milk, and made up into an electuary with honey, being taken often, is very pro- fitable for those that are purfy and short winded. Being boiled twice, an old cock boiled in the broth and drank, it helps the pains, and the obstructions of the liver and spleen, and the stone in the kidneys. The juice boiled with honey, and dropped into the corner of the eyes, cleareth the sight, by consuming any film or cloud beginning to dim it; it also consumes the canker growing therein. They are much com- 1 mended, being eaten before meat Jto keep \ one from surfeiting, as also from being I drunk with too much wine, or quickly to \ make a man sober again that is drunk be- j fore. For (as they say) there is such an I antipathy or enmity between the Vine and \ the Coleworts, that the one will die where ; the other grows. The decoction of Cole- J worts takes away the pain and ache, and I allayeth the swellings of sores and gouty \ legs and knees, wherein many gross and 1 watery humours are fallen, the place being \ bathed therewith warm. It helps also old \ and filthy sores, being bathed therewith, I and heals all small scabs, pushes, and ; wheals, that break out in the skin. The \ ashes of Colewort stalks mixed with old \ hog’s grease, are very effectual to anoint I the sides of those that have had long pains i therein, or any other place pained with ; melancholy and windy humours. This was I surely Chiysippus’s God, and therefore he I wrote a whole Amlume of them and their ! virtues, and that none of the least neither, \ for he would be no small fool: He appro- j priates them to every part of the body, and I to every disease in every part; and honest 5 old Cato (they say) used no other physic. II know not what metal their bodies were 1 made of; this I am sure. Cabbages are 1 extremely windy, whether you take them as meat or as medicine: yea, as wdndy meat as can be eaten, unless you eat bag-pipes or bellows, and they are but seldom eaten in our days; and Colewort flowers are some- thing more tolerable, and the wholesomer food of the two dominion of the herb. The Moon challenges the THE SEA COLEWORTS. Desc)'ipf.~\ Tins has divers somewhat long and broad large and thick wrinkled leaves, somewhat crumpled about the edges, and growing each upon a thick footstalk, very brittle, of a greyish green colour, from among which rises up a strong thick$