THE ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 135 



The said water fomented on swellings, and hot inflamma- 

 tions of women's breasts, upon cankers also, and those 

 spreading ulcers called Noli me tangerej do much good. 

 It helpeth also foul ulcers in the privities of man or wo- 

 man ; but an ointment made of the flowers is better for 

 those external applications. 



Flax-Weed, or Toad -Flax. d*. (temp.d. 3.) 



Tins very noxious weed is reckoned, by some, to be 

 poisonous, though it is likewise very useful. 



Descript.'] Our common flax-weed hath divers stalks, 

 full fraught with long and narrow ash. coloured leaves, 

 aad from the middle of them almost upward, stored with 

 a number of pale yellow flowers, of a strong unpleasant 

 scent, with deeper yellow mouths, and blackish flat seed 

 in round heads. The root is somewhat woody, and 

 white, especially the main downright one, with many 

 fibres, abiding many years, shooting forth roots every 

 way round about, and new branches every year. 



Place.'] This groweth throughout this laud, both by 

 the way-siiles, and in meadows, as also by hedge-sides^ 

 and upon the side* of banks, and borders of fields. 



Time.'] It flowereth in summer, and the seed is ripe 

 usually before the tnd of August. 



Government and f irtues.] Mars owns this herb. la 

 Sussex we call it Gallwort, and lay it on our chickens' 

 water, to cure them of the gall ; it relieves them whea 

 they are drooping. This is frequently used to spend the 

 abundance of those watery humours by urine, which cause 

 the dropsy. The decodlion of the herb, both leaves and 

 flowers, in wine taken and drank, doth somewhat move 

 the belly downwards, openeth obstructions of the liver, 

 and helpeth the yellow jaundice; expelleth poison, pro- 

 voketh women's courses, and driveth forth the dead child 

 and after-birth. The distilled water of the herb and flow- 

 ers is efFeftual for all the same purposes; being drank with 

 a dram of the powder of the seeds of bark, or the roots 

 of wall-wort, and a little cinnamon, for certain days to- 

 gether, it is held a singular remedy for the dropsy. The 

 juice of the herb, or the distilled water, dropped into the 

 cyesj is a certaiu remedy for all heat, iaflammatioflj and 

 1 



