Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    27/376 (page 15)
    [In 1633 five sorts of Apricots were known : The common, the long and great, the musk, the Barbary, and the early Apricock.-] Johnsojis edition of Gerard's Herbal, p. 1448. Ash. That body, where against My grained ash an hundred times hath broke. CORIOLANUS, iv, 5, 112. Ash is good for shafts and spears. The leaves thereof helpeth against venom, and the juice thereof wrung and drunk helpeth best against serpents. And Ash hath so great virtue, that serpents come not in the shadow thereof in the morning nor at even. And if a serpent be set between a fire and Ash-leaves, he will flee into the fire sooner than into the leaves. In Greece the leaves thereof is poison to beasts, and grieveth not other beasts that chew their cud, and grieveth not beasts in Italy. Bartholomew {Bertkelet), blc. xvii. § 62. The fruit like unto cods is termed in English Ash-keys, and of some Kite - keys. It is a wonderful courtesy in nature that the Ash should flower before these serpents appear, and not cast his leaves before they be gone again. Three or four leaves of the Ash-tree taken in wine each morning from time to time do make those lean that are fat, and keepeth them from feeding which do begin to wax fat. Gerard's Herbal, s.-j. (Whether by the power of magic or nature I determine not) I have heard it affirmed with great confidence, and upon experience, that the rupture to which many children are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft made in the bole or stem of a growing Ash-tree, through which the child is made to pass; and then carried a second time round the Ash, caused to repass the same aperture again, that the cleft of the tree sufi^ered to close and coalesce, as it will, the rupture of the child, being carefully bound up, will not only abate, but be perfectly cured. The white and rotten dotard part composes a ground for our gallants' sweet powder. Evelyn's Sylva,'' p. 62 (ed. 1706).