AND ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED. 



19 



inflammations arising from wounds, and 

 the swelling of women's breasts caused by 

 the curdling of their milk, and represses 

 their milk ; Flour of beans and Fenugreek 

 mixed with honey, and applied to felons, 

 boils, bruises, or blue marks by blows, or 

 the imposthumes in the kernels of the ears, 

 helps them all, and with Rose leaves, 

 Frankincense and the white of an egg, being 

 applied to the eyes, helps them that are 

 swollen or do water, or have received any 

 blow upon them, if used with wine. If a 

 bean be parted in two, the skin being taken 

 away, and laid on the place where the leech 

 hath been set that bleeds too much, stays 

 the bleeding. Bean flour boiled to a poul- 

 tice with wine and vinegar, and some oil 

 put thereto, eases both pains and swelling 

 of the privities. The husk boiled in water to 

 the consumption of a third part thereof, 

 stays a lask ; and the ashes of the husks, 

 made up with old hog's grease, helps the 

 old pains, contusions, and wounds of the 

 sinews, the sciatica and gout. The field 

 beans have all the aforementioned virtues 

 as the garden beans. 



Beans eaten are extremely windy meat ; 

 but if after the Dutch fashion, when they 

 are half boiled you husk them and then 

 stew them (I cannot tell you how, for I 

 never was a cook in all my life), they are 

 wholesome food. 



FRENCH BEANS. 



DescriptJ] THIS French or kidney Bean 

 arises at first but with one stalk, which 

 afterwards divides itself into many arms or 

 branches, but all so weak that if they be not 

 sustained with sticks or poles, they will be 

 fruitless upon the ground. At several places 

 of these branches grow foot stalks, each 

 with three broad round and pointed green 

 leaves at the end of them ; towards the 

 top comes forth divers flowers made like 

 to pease blossoms, of the same colour for 

 the most part that the fruit will be of, that 



it to say, white, yellow, red, blackish, or of 

 a deep purple, but white is the most usual; 

 after which come long and slender flat pods, 

 some crooked, some straight, with a string 

 running down the back thereof, wherein is 

 flattish round fruit made like a kidney ; the 

 root long, spreads with many strings an- 

 nexed to it, and perishes every year. 



There is another sort of French beans 

 commonly growing with us in this land, 

 which is called the Scarlet flower Bean. 



This rises with sundry branches as the 

 other, but runs higher, to the length of hop- 

 poles, about which they grow twining, but 

 turning contrary to the sun, having foot- 

 stalks with three leaves on each, as on the 

 others ; the flowers also are like the other, 

 and of a most orient scarlet colour. The 

 Beans are larger than the ordinary kind, 

 of a dead purple colour turning black when 

 ripe and dry ; the root perishes in Winter. 



Government and virtues J] These also be- 

 long to Dame Venus, and being dried and 

 beat to powder, are as great strengtheners 

 of the kidneys as any are ; neither is there 

 a better remedy than it ; a dram at a time 

 taken in white wine to prevent the stone, or 

 to cleanse the kidneys of gravel or stoppage. 

 The ordinary French Beans are of an easy 

 digestion; they move the belly, provoke 

 urine, enlarge the breast that is straight- 

 ened with shortness of breath, engender 

 sperm, and incite to venery. And the 

 scarlet coloured Beans, in regard of the 

 glorious beauty of their colour, being set 

 near a quickset hedge, will much adorn the 

 same, by climbing up thereon, so that they 

 may be discerned a great way, not without 

 admiration of the beholders at a distance. 

 But they will go near to kill the quicksets 

 by cloathing them in scarlet. 



LADIES BED-STRAW. 



BESIDES the common name above writ- 

 ten, it is called Cheese-Rennet, because it 

 performs the same office, as also Gailion, 



