Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay ColonyDow, George Francis
History
Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
Dow, George Francis
Massachusetts -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
Take baye Leaues, Wormwood, Sage, Rue, Cammemoyle, mellelote,
groundsell, Violets, Plantaine, oake buds or Leaues [ ] Suckbery
Pursline, Lettuc, Red colworts, Saint Johns wort, mallows, mullin,
Jsop, Sorrell and Comfrye, yarrow, and Dead Nettles, and Mint,
mugwort, Rose leaues, gather them all in the heat of the Daye, pick
them Cleene but wash them not, Beat them well then take Sheepe
Suett three Pound Picke it Cleene and Shrid it Smale Pound them all
well together, then take 2 quarts of Sallet oyle then work them all
together with your hand till it be a Like then put it in an Earthen
Pott and Couer it Close and Lett it Stand 14 Dayes in a Coule Place
then Sett it ouer a Softe fire and Lett it Boyle 14 howers Stiring
it well then put into it 4 ounces of oyle of Spicke then Straine it
through a Corse Cloath & put it into [ ] Pott and Couer it Cloase
and Keepe it for your vse
_For Ye Toothe Ache_[90]
[90] _Tooth Ache._ Picking the gums with the bill of an osprey
is good for the tooth-ache. Scarifying the gums with a thorn
from a dog-fish's back is also a cure.--_New Englands Rarities_
(_Josselyn_), London, 1672.
Take a Litle Pece of opium as big as a great pinnes head & put it
into the hollow place of the Akeing Tooth & it will giue preasant
Ease, often tryed by me apon many People & neuer fayled
Zerobabel Endecott
* * * * *
Who would know the virtues of the herbs and simples that grew in the
gardens of the Massachusetts Bay? Many herbals have been compiled
and printed, none more enticing than Nicholas Culpepper's "English
Herbals," more truly entitled "The English Physician Enlarged," and
first published in 1653. It had an enormous sale. Since that year
twenty-one different editions have served their day, the last having
been printed at Exeter, N.H., as late as 1824.
Culpepper, the son of a clergyman, was born in London in 1616 and
died when only thirty-eight years old. In that short time, however,
he gained fame as a writer on astrology and medicine. At first
apprenticed to an apothecary, he later set up for himself as a
physician and acquired a high reputation among his patients.
In his catalogue of the simples he premises a few words to the
reader, viz.: "Let a due time be observed (cases of necessity
excepted) in gathering all Simples: for which take these few Rules.
All Roots are of most virtue when the Sap is down in them, viz.
towards the latter end of the summer, or beginning of the spring,
for happily in Winter many of them cannot be found: you may hang up
many of them a drying, by drawing a string through them, and so keep
them a whole year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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