The Complete Herbal: To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic.Culpeper, Nicholas
History
The Complete Herbal: To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic.
Culpeper, Nicholas
Botany, Medical; Botany, Medical -- England; Herbs -- Therapeutic use; Materia medica, Vegetable; Medicinal plants; Medicinal plants -- England
_Descript._] OUR common Henbane has very large, thick, soft, woolly
leaves, lying on the ground, much cut in, or torn on the edges, of
a dark, ill greyish green colour; among which arise up divers thick
and short stalks, two or three feet high, spread into divers small
branches, with lesser leaves on them, and many hollow flowers, scarce
appearing above the husk, and usually torn on one side, ending in five
round points, growing one above another, of a deadish yellowish colour,
somewhat paler towards the edges, with many purplish veins therein,
and of a dark, yellowish purple in the bottom of the flower, with a
small point of the same colour in the middle, each of them standing in
a hard close husk, which after the flowers are past, grow very like
the husk of Asarabacca, and somewhat sharp at the top points, wherein
is contained much small seed, very like Poppy seed, but of a dusky,
greyish colour. The root is great, white, and thick, branching forth
divers ways under ground, so like a Parsnip root (but that it is not so
white) that it has deceived others. The whole plant more than the root,
has a very heavy, ill, soporiferous smell, somewhat offensive.
_Place._] It commonly grows by the way-sides, and under hedge-sides and
walls.
_Time._] It flowers in July, and springs again yearly of its own seed.
I doubt my authors mistook July for June, if not for May.
_Government and virtues._] I wonder how astrologers could take on
them to make this an herb of Jupiter; and yet Mizaldus, a man of
a penetrating brain, was of that opinion as well as the rest; the
herb is indeed under the dominion of Saturn, and I prove it by this
argument: All the herbs which delight most to grow in saturnine places,
are saturnine herbs. Both Henbane delights most to grow in saturnine
places, and whole cart loads of it may be found near the places where
they empty the common Jakes, and scarce a ditch to be found without it
growing by it. Ergo, it is an herb of Saturn. The leaves of Henbane do
cool all hot inflammations in the eyes, or any other part of the body;
and are good to assuage all manner of swellings of the privities, or
women’s breast, or elsewhere, if they be boiled in wine, and either
applied themselves, or the fomentation warm; it also assuages the pain
of the gout, the sciatica, and other pains in the joints which arise
from a hot cause. And applied with vinegar to the forehead and temples,
helps the head-ache and want of sleep in hot fevers. The juice of the
herb or seed, or the oil drawn from the seed, does the like. The oil
of the seed is helpful for deafness, noise, and worms in the ears,
being dropped therein; the juice of the herb or root doth the same. The
decoction of the herb or seed, or both, kills lice in man or beast.
The fume of the dried herb, stalks and seed, burned, quickly heals
swellings, chilblains or kibes in the hands or feet, by holding them in
the fume thereof. The remedy to help those that have taken Henbane is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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