AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 25 
quality, and thereby very good to be used 
in wound drinks; as also to apply outwardly 
for the same purpose. But the latter Bird’s 
Foot is found by experience to break the 
stone in the back or kidneys, and drives 
them forth, if the decoction thereof be 
taken; and it wonderfully helps the rup- 
ture, being taken inwardly, and outwardly 
applied to the place. 
All salts have best operations upon the 
stone, as ointments and plaisters have upon 
wounds: and therefore you may make a 
salt of this for the stone; the way how to 
do so may be found in my translation of the 
London Dispensatory; and it may be I- 
may give you it again in plainer terms at 
the latter end of this book. 
BISHOP’S-WEED. 
Besipes the common name Bishopweed, 
it is usually known by the Greek name 
Ammi and Ammois; some call it Zthiopian 
Cummin-seed, and others Cummin-royal, as 
also Herb William, and Bullwort. 
Descript.| Common Bishop’s-weed rises 
up with a round straight stalk, sometimes 
as high as a man, but usually three or four 
feet high, beset with divers small, long and 
somewhat broad leaves, cut in some places, 
and dented about the edges, growing one 
against another, of a dark green colour, 
having sundry branches on them, and at the 
top small umbels of white flowers, which 
turn into small round seeds little bigger 
than parsley seeds, of a quick hot scent and 
taste; the root is white and stringy ; perish- 
ing yearly, and usually rises again on its 
own sowing. 
Place.| It grows wild in n many places in 
England and Wales, as between Green- 
hithe and Gravesend. 
Government and virtues.] It is hot and 
dry in the third degree, of a bitter taste, 
and somewhat sharp withal; it provokes 
lust to purpose; I suppose Venus owns it. 
It digests humours, provokes urine and 
women’s courses, dissolveth wind, and being 
taken in wine it eases pain and griping in 
the bowels, and is good against the biting 
of serpents; it is used to good effects in 
those medicines which are given to hinder 
the poisonous operation of Cantharides, 
| upon the passage of the urine: being mixed 
with honey and applied to black and blue 
marks, coming of blows or bruises, it takes 
them away; and being drank or outwardly 
applied, it abates an high colour, and 
makes it pale; and the fumes thereof taken 
with rosin or raisins, cleanses the mother. 
BISTORT, OR SNAKEWEED. 
Ir is called Snakeweed, English Serpen- 
tary, Dragon-wort, Osterick, and Passions. 
Descript.| This has a_ thick short 
knobbed root, blackish without, and some- 
what reddish within, a little crooked or 
turned together, of a hard astringent taste, 
with divers black threads hanging there, 
from whence spring up every year divers 
leaves, standing upon long footstalks, being 
somewhat broad and long like a dock leaf, 
and a little pointed at the ends, but that it 
is of a bluish green colour on the upper side, 
and of an ash-colour grey, and a little pur- 
plish underneath, with divers veins therein, 
from among which rise up divers small and 
slender stalks, two feet high, and almost 
naked and without leaves, or with a very 
few, and narrow, bearing a spikey bush of 
pale-coloured flowers; which being past, 
there abides small seed, like unto sorrel 
seed, but greater. 
There are other sorts of Bistort growing 
in this land, but smaller, both in height, 
root, and stalks, and especially in the 
leaves. The root blackish without, and — 
somewhat whitish within; of an sorters 
binding taste, as the former. 
Place.} They grow in shadowy moist 
woods, and at the foot of hills, but are 
