PERIWINKLE. 1G7 



IIIIHIIll cased, till he had wrapped some of the 

 branches hereof about his legs and other parts that 

 were affected. 11 It was also a celebrated simple for 

 restoring milk to the breasts of nurses, and was re- 

 commended lor that purpose by the most learned 

 physicians of early days. Ray, who was so cele- 

 brated as a botanist in the seventeenth century, and 

 to whose memory Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, 

 erected a monument in the churchyard of Black 

 Notley, in Essex, tells us, in his Ills. Plant., that 

 u the fresh leaves of the Periwinkle, spread upon 

 coarse and thick brown paper, and well matted and 

 pressed together, then covered with combed flax 

 and afterwards fumigated with frankincense, being, 

 by the advice of an old w<oman, applied to a stru- 

 mous swelling, discussed it in a short time, after it 

 had been, for a whole year, under the treatment of 

 a learned physician, without effect. The same old 

 woman had, before this, with the same medicine, 

 cured another whose case w r as reckoned desperate. 51 

 We may probably be laughed at by modern 

 practitioners for noticing the receipt of an old 

 woman, but we shall give a laugh in return against 

 one of their own body, who gravely tells us in 



1681, " That the leaves of the Feri winkle, eaten by 

 man and wife together, cause love between them.' 



{Culpepper.) 



The admirers of Rousseau still hold this plant 



