Culpeper's complete herbal : consisting of a comprehensive description of nearly all British and foreign herbs; with their medicinal properties and directions for compounding the medicines extracted from them.

Nicholas Culpeper

Date:: [1900?]

Credit: Culpeper's complete herbal : consisting of a comprehensive description of nearly all British and foreign herbs; with their medicinal properties and directions for compounding the medicines extracted from them. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

408/464 page 380

$by rubbing in the morning. It is a most gallant tree of the Sun, very sympathetica! with the body; that is the reason why spirit of wine is the greatest cordial among vegetables. VIOLET.—(Viola Odorata.) Descrip.—The root is perennial ; it is long, slender, crooked, and fibrous ; they are supported on long slender leaf-stalks, of a roundish figure, heart-shaped at the base, slightly notched at the edges, and of a dark green colour, several slender creeping steuis rise from among them,which take root at the joints, and so propagate the plant. The flowers are supported singly on long, slender, fruit-stalks, which rise direct from the root; they are large, of a beau- tiful deei> bhie or purple, and extremely fragrant. The seeds are egg-shaped, numerous, and furnished with appeudages. Place.—It is common on warm banks, and produces ita blossoms in March and A])ril. Time.—It flowers uutil the end of July, but it is best in March, and the beginning of April. Oover)iment and Virtues.—It is a fine, pleasing plant of Venus, of a mild nature, -and no way hurtful. It is cold and moist while fresh and green, and is used to cool any heat or distemperature of the body, either inwardly or outwai'dly, as inflammations in the eyes, in the matrix or fundament, in imposthumes also, and hot swellings, to drink the decoction of the leaves and flowers made with water or wine, or to Apply them as poultices to the aff'ect- ed pai'ts ; it eases pains in the head, caused through want of sleep; or any pains arising from heat, if applied in the same manner, or with oil of roses. A dram weight of the dried leaves or flowers purges the body of choleric hu- mours, if taken in a draught of wine or other drink ; the powder of the purple leaves of the flowers, only picked and di'ied, and drank in water, helps the quinsy, the falling- sickness in children, especially at the beginning of the dis- ease. The flowers of the white Violets ripen and dissolve swellings. The herb or flowers, while they are fresh, or the flowers that are dry, are efiectual in the pleurisy, and all diseases of the lungs, to lenify the sharpness of hot rheums, and hoarseness of the throat, heat and sharpness of urine, and all pains of the back, or reins, and bladder. VIOLET (WATER.)—{Eottonia Falv^tris.) Descrip.—The root is a tuft of long, black, and slender fibres, which penetrate deep into the mud. The lea.ves are$