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.

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    The common Thistle, whereof the greatest quantity of down is gathered for divers purposes, as well by the poor to stop pillows, cushions, and beds for want of feathers, as also bought of the rich upholsters to mix with the feathers and down they do sell, which deceit would be looked into. The leaves and roots hereof are a remedy for those that have their bodies drawn backward. Gerard's Herbal, bk. ii. ch. cccclxxvi. The tender leaves of our Lady's Thistle, the prickles taken off, are sometimes used to be eaten with other herbs. The seeds being drunk, are a remedy for infants that have their sinews drawn together, and for those that are bitten of serpents ; and it is thought to drive away serpents, if it be but hanged about the neck. Ibid., ch. cccclxxvii. The root of carline Thistle is an enemy to all manner of poisons ; it doth not only drive away infections of the plague, but also cureth the same, if it be drunk in time. And it is given to those that have been dry-beaten, and fallen from some high place. ihid., ch. cccclxxxi. V. Carduus Benedictus. Thorn. A THORN is a tree with sharp pricks, and is as it were armed with pricks against wrongs of them that touch it. And properly to speak, the thorn is the prick that groweth out of the thorn or of herbs and trees with pricks, and the prick springeth out of the stock or of the stalk, and is great next to the tree and stalk, and sharp outward at the point. And it is not the intent of kind that trees be sharp with pricks and thorns ; but it happeth and cometh of unfastness and unsadness of the tree, by the which cold humour is drawn that is but little sodden, and is drawn and passeth by pores and holes outward, and is harded by heat of the sun, and made a thorn or a prick, and is made small and sharp at the end for scarcity of matter, and sometime is sharp and somedeal bending, as it fareth in Briers and Roseres [Rose-trees] ; sometime the point is a-reared upright. Oft growing of thorns is token of