Se ae 
i i areata 
AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 
147 
green leaves by the couples, and sweet 
smelling white flowers in tufts at the end of 
the branches, which turn into small black 
berries that have a purplish juice with 
them, and some seeds that are flat on the one 
side, with a hole or dent therein. ' 
Place.] It grows in this land, in divers 
woods. ; 
Time.] Our Privet flowers in June and 
July, the berries are ripe in August and 
September. 
Government and virtues.] The Moon is 
lady of this. It is little used in physic with 
us in these times, more than in lotions, to 
wash sores and sore mouths, and to cool up 
inflammations, and dry up fluxes. Yet 
Matthiolus saith, it serves to all the uses 
for which Cypress, or the East Privet, is 
appointed by Dioscorides and Galen. He 
further saith, That the oil that is made of 
the flowers of Privet infused therein, and 
set in the Sun, is singularly good for the in- 
flammations of wounds, and for the head- 
ache, coming of a hot cause. There is a 
Sweet water also distilled from the flowers, 
that is good for all those diseases that need 
cooling and drying, and therefore helps all 
fluxes of the belly or stomach, bloody-fluxes, 
and women’s courses, being either drank or 
applied; as all those that void blood at the 
mouth, or any other place, and for distilla- 
tions of rheum in the eyes, especially if it 
be used with tutia. 
QUEEN OF THE MEADOWS, MEADOW 
SWEET, OR MEAD SWEET. 
_Descript.] Tue stalks of these are red- 
h, rising to be three feet high, sometimes 
four or five feet, having at the joints thereof 
large winged leaves, standing one above 
‘nother at distances, consisting of many 
and Somewhat broad leaves, set on each 
‘ide of a middle rib, being hard, rough, or 
rugged, crumpled much like unto elm leaves, 
(as agrimony hath) somewhat deeply 
dented about the edges, or a sad green 
colour on the upper side, and greyish under- 
neath, of a pretty sharp scent and taste, 
somewhat like unto the burnet, and a leaf 
hereof put into a cup of claret wine, gives 
also a fine relish to it. At the tops of the 
stalks and branches stand many tufts of 
small white flowers thrust thick together, 
which smell much sweeter than the leaves; 
and in their places, being fallen, some 
crooked and cornered seed. The root is 
somewhat woody, and blackish on the out- 
side, and brownish within, with divers great 
strings, and lesser fibres set thereat, of a 
strong scent, but nothing so pleasant as the 
flowers and leaves, and perishes not, but 
abides many years, shooting forth a-new 
every spring. 
Place.| It grows in moist meadows that 
lie mostly wet, or near the coursés of water. 
-Time.] It flowers in some places or other 
all the three Summer months, that is, June, 
July, and August, and the seed is ripe soon 
after. 
Government and virtues.] Venus claims 
dominion over the herb. It is used to stay 
all manner of bleedings, fluxes, vomitings, 
and women’s courses, as also their whites: 
It is said to alter and take away the fits of 
the quartan agues, and to make a merry 
heart, for which purpose some use the 
flowers, and some the leaves. It helps 
speedily those that are troubled with the 
cholic; being boiled in wine, and with a 
little honey taken warm, it opens the belly; 
but boiled in red wine, and drank, it stays 
the flux of the belly. Outwardly applied, 
it helps old ulcers that are cankerous, or 
hollow fistulous, for which it is by many — 
much commended, as also for the sores in © 
the mouth or secret parts. The leaves when 
they are full grown, being laid on the skin, 
will, in a short time, raise blisters the reon 
