THE ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 163 



colour; among ivhich arise up divers thick and short 

 staJks, two or three feet high, spread into divers small 

 branches, with lesser leaves on them, and many hollow 

 flowers, scarce appearing above the husk, and usually- 

 torn on one side, ending in five round points, growing 

 one above another, of a deadish yellowish colour, some- 

 what paler towards the edges, with many purplish veins 

 therein : and a dark, yellowish purple in the bottom of 

 (he flower, with a small point of the same colour in the 

 middle, each of them standing in a hard close husk, Avhich 

 iil'tcr the flowers are past, groweth very like the husk of 

 Asarabacca, and somewhat sharp at the top points, 

 wherein is contained much small seed, very like Poppy 

 seed, but of a dusky, greyish colour. The root is 

 great, white and thick, branching forth divers ways under 

 ground, so like a Parsnip root (but that it is not so white) 

 that it hath deceived others. 



Place.'] It commonly groweth by the way-sides, and 

 under hedge-sides and walls. 



Time.'] It flowereth in July, and springeth again 

 yearly of its own seed. 1 doubt my authors mistook 

 July for June, if not for May. 



Government and Virtues.'] I wonder how astrologers 

 could take on them to make this a« herb of Jupiter; 

 and yet Mezaldus, a man of penetrating brain, was of 

 that opinion as well as the rest; the herb is indeed under 

 the dominion of Saturn, and I prove it by this argument: 

 All the herbs which grow in Saturnine places, are Satur- 

 nine herbs. But ilcnbane delights most to grow iu 

 Saturnine places, and whole cart loads of it may be found 

 near the places where they empty the common jakes, and 

 scarce a ditch to be found without it growing by it. 

 P^go, it is an herb of Saturn. The leaves of Henbane do 

 coul all hot inflammations in the eyes, or any other part 

 of the body ; and are good to assuage all manner of 

 swellings of the privities, or women's breasts, or elsewhere, 

 if they be boiled in wine, and either appiiod themselves, or 

 the fomentation warm ; it also assuageth the pain of the 

 gout, the sciatica, and other pains in the joints which 

 arise from a hot cause. And applied with vinegar to the 

 forehead and temples, helpeth the hcad-ach and want of 

 sleep in hot fevers. The juice of the herb or seed, or the 



