90 
THE COMPLETE HERBAL 
in wine, helps digestion, discusses wind, 
hinders crudities abiding in the stomach, 
and helps the difficulty of making water, 
the biting of venomous serpents, and sting- 
ing of the scorpion, if the herb be also out- 
wardly applied to the place, and is very 
good against all other poisons. A scruple 
of the dried root given in wine and vine- 
gar, is profitable for those that have the 
dropsy. The decoction of the herb taken 
in honey, digests the phlegm in the chest 
or lungs, and with hyssop helps the cough. 
The decoction thereof, and of wild succory, 
made with wine, and taken, helps the wild 
cholic and hardness of the spleen; it pro- 
cures rest and sleep, hinders venery and 
venereous dreams, cooling heats, purges 
the stomach, increases blood, and helps the 
diseases of reins and bladder. Outwardly 
applied, it is singularly good for all the 
defects and diseases of the eyes, used with 
some women’s milk; and used with good 
success in fretting or creeping ulcers, espe- 
cially in the beginning. The green leaves 
bruised, and with a little salt applied to 
any place burnt with fire, before blisters 
do rise, helps them; as also inflammations, 
St. Anthony’s fire, and all pushes and 
eruptions, hot and salt phlegm. The same 
applied with meal and fair water in man- 
_ ner of a poultice, to any place affected with 
convulsions and the cramp, such as are out 
of joint, doth give help and ease. The dis- 
tilled water cleanses the skin, and takes 
away freckles, spots, morphew, or wrinkles 
in the face. 
HAWTHORN. 
Ir is not my intention to trouble you 
_ with a description of this tree, which is so 
_ well known that it needs none. It is ordi- 
-narily but a hedge bush, although being 
oe pruned and dressed, it grows to a tree of a 
_ As for the Hawthorn Tree at Glaston- 
bury, which is said to flower yearly on 
Christmas-day, it rather shews the supersti- 
tion of those that observe it for the time of 
its flowering, than any great wonder, since 
the like may be found in divers other places 
of this land; as in Whey-street in Romney 
March, and near unto Nantwich in Ches- 
hire, by a place called White Green, where 
it flowers about Christmas and May. If the 
weather be frosty, it flowers not until Janu- 
ary, or that the hard weather be over. 
Government and virtues.] It is a tree of 
Mars. The seeds in the berries beaten to 
powder being drank in wine, are held sin- 
gularly good against the stone, and are good 
for the dropsy. The distilled water of the 
flowers stays the lask. The seed cleared 
| from the down, bruised and boiled in wine, 
and drank, is good for inward tormenting 
pains. If cloths and sponges be wet in the 
distilled water, and applied to any place 
wherein thorns and splinters, or the like, 
do abide in the flesh, it will notably draw 
them forth. 
And thus you see the thorn gives a medi- 
cine for his own pricking, and so doth al- 
most every thing else. 
HEMLOCK. 
Descript. Tux common great Hemlock 
grows up with a green stalk, four or five 
feet high, or more, full of red spots some- 
times, and at the joints very large winged 
leaves set at them, which are divided into 
many other winged leaves one set against 
the other, dented about the edges, of a sad 
green colour, branched towards the top, 
where it is full of umbels of white flowers; 
and afterwards with whitish flat seed: The 
root is long, white, and sometimes crooked, 
and hollow within. The whole plant, and 
every part, has a strong, heady, and ill- 
savoured scent, much offending the senses. 
Place.| It grows in all counties of this 
land, by walls and hedge-sides, in waste 
GENT AR Caetisee aJ§ Seah UA ee de 
