AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED 
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Mercury are found wild in divers places of 
this land, as by a village called Brookland 
in Rumney Marsh in Kent. 
The Dog Mercury in sundry places of 
Kent also, and elsewhere; but the female 
more seldom than the male. 
Time.] They flower in the Summer 
months, and therein give their seed. 
Government and virtues.] Mercury, they” 
say, owns the herb, but I rather think it is 
Venus’s, and I am partly confident of it too, 
for I never heard that Mercury ever 
minded women’s business so much: I be- 
lieve he minds his study more. The decoc- 
tion of the leaves of Mercury, or the juice 
thereof in broth, or drank with a little sugar 
put to it, purges choleric and waterish 
humours. Hippocrates commended it won- 
derfully for women’s diseases, and applied 
to the secret parts, to ease the pains of the 
mother; and used the decoction of it, both 
to procure women’s courses, and to expel the 
after-birth; and gave the decoction thereof 
with myrrh or pepper, or used to apply the 
leaves outwardly against the stranguary 
and diseases of the reins and bladder. He 
used it also for sore and watering eyes, and 
for the deafness and pains in the ears, by 
dropping the juice thereof into them, and 
bathing them afterwards in white wine. 
The decoction thereof made with water and 
a cock chicken, is a most safe medicine 
against the hot fits of agues. It also cleanses 
the breast and lungs of phlegm, but a little 
offends the stomach. The juice or distilled 
water snuffed up into the nostrils, purges 
the head and eyes of catarrhs and rheums. 
Some use to drink two or three ounces of 
the distilled water, with a little sugar put 
to it, in the morning fasting, to open and 
purge the body of gross, viscous, and melan- 
choly humours. Matthiolus saith, that both 
the seed of the male and female Mercury 
_ boiled with wormwood and drank, cures the 
yellow jaundice in a speedy manner. The 
) women’s breasts, and for such E 
aves sr the Salee nilbed ee steieidea SW at bi 
them away. The juice mingled with some 
vinegar, helps all running scabs, tetters, 
ringworms, and the itch. Galen saith, that 
being applied in manner of a poultice to any — 
swelling or inflammation, it digests the 
swelling, and allays the inflammation, and 
is therefore given in clysters to evacuate 
from the belly offensive humours. The Dog 
Mercury, although it be less used, yet may 
serve in the same manner, to the same pur- 
pose, to purge waterish and melancholy 
humours. 
MINT. 
Or all the kinds of Mint, the Spear Mint, 
or Heart Mint, being most usual, I shall 
only describe as follows: 
Descript.| Spear Mint has divers round 
stalks, and long but narrowish leaves set 
thereon, of a dark green colour. The 
flowers stand in spiked heads at the tops — 
of the branches, being of a pale blue colour. 
The smell or scent thereof is somewhat near 
unto Basil; it increases by the root under 
ground as all the others do. 
Place.| It is an usual inhabitant in gar- 
dens; And because it seldom gives any good 
seed, the effects is recompensed by the 
plentiful increase of the root, which being 
once planted in a garden, will hardly be rid © 
out again. 
Time.| It flowers not until the beget 
of August, for the most part. 
Government and virtues.] It is an herb 
of Venus. Dioscorides saith it hath a heal- 
ing, binding and drying quality, and there- 
fore the juice taken in vinegar, stays bleed- _ 
ing: It stirs up venery, or bodily lust; two 
or three branches thereof taken in the juice 
of four pomegranates, stays the hiccough, » | 
vomiting, and allays the choler. It dissolves _ 
imposthumes being laid to with barley- 
meal. It is good to repress the milk in 
