THE ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 45 



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 llowers, which turn into 

 small round seeds, little bigger than parsley seeds, of a 

 quick hot scent and taste ; the root is white and stringy, 

 perishing yearly, and usually riscth again on its own 

 sowing. 



Place.'] Itgroweth wild in many places in England and 

 Wales, as between Greenhithe and Gravesend. 



Government and Firtues-I It is hot and dry in the third 

 degree, of a bitter taste, and somewhat sharp ; it pro- 

 vokes lust; I suppose Venus owns it. It digesteth hu- 

 mours, provoketh urine and women's courses, dissolveth 

 wind, and being taken in wine it easeth pain and griping 

 in the bowels, and is good against the biting of serpents ; 

 it is used to good eflfects 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 draak or out. 

 wardly applied, it abateth an high colour, and makes it 

 pale ; and the fumes thereof taken with rosin or raisins, 

 cleanseth the mother. 



Bistort, or Snakeweed. }j . (temp. d. 3.) 



ix'is called Snakeweed, English Serpentary, Dragon-wort, 

 Osterick, and Passions. 



Descript.'] This hath a thick short knobbed root, 

 blackish without, and somewhat reddish within, a little 

 crooked or turned together, of a hard astringent taste, 

 with divers black threads hanging there, from whence 

 sjjring up every year divers leaves standing upon long 

 foot-stalks, 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 purplish underneath, with divers 

 veins therein, from among which rise up divers small 

 and slender stalks, two feet high, and almost naked and 

 M ithout leaves, or with a very few, and narrow, bearing 



