MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED HERBALS 71 



Other substances described are salt, cheese, pitch, lead, 

 silver, gold, amber, water, starch, vinegar, butter, honey and 

 the lodestone. The dissertation on water shows very clearly 

 that our ancestors regarded bathing as a fad, and a dangerous 

 fad at that. The writer gloomily observes, " many folke that 

 hath bathed them in colde water haue dyed or they came home." 

 And those who are foolish enough to drink water he warns by 

 quoting the authority of " Mayster Isaac," who " sayth that 

 it is impossible for them that drynketh overmuche water in 

 theyr youth to come to ye age that God hath ordeyned them." 

 In the description of the lodestone we find the well-known 

 popular belief about ships being drawn to their destruction. 

 " The lodestone, the adamant stone that draweth yren hath 

 myghte to draw yren as Aristotle sayth. And is founde in the 

 brymmes of the occyan see. And there be hillis of it and these 

 hyllis drawe ye shippes that haue nayles of yren to them and 

 breke the shyppes by drawynge of the nayles out." The accom- 

 panying illustration is of a sinking ship with a man going 

 towards the hill of adamant with uplifted hands, while another 

 man is swimming, and a third sits calmly in the ship. 



In view of the free use of honey in olden times, the account 

 of honey in the Grete Herball seems inadequate. " Hony is 

 made by artyfyce and craft of bees. The whyche bees draweth 

 the thynnest parte of the floures and partelye of the thickest 

 and moost grosse and thereof maketh hony and waxe and also 

 they make a substaunce that is called the honycombe. The 

 tame hony is that that is made in the hous or hyues that labourers 

 ordeyneth for the sayd bees to lodge and worke in. Hony is 

 whyte in cold places and browne in warm place. And hony 

 ought to be put in medicyne and may be kept C yeeres. There 



room books. In the Fairfax still-room book a recipe for wounds said to have 

 been procured from " Rodolphus Goclerius, professor of Phisicke in Witten- 

 burghe," begins thus : " Take of the moss of a strangled man 2 ounces, of the 

 mumia of man's blood, one ounce and a halfe of earth-worms washed in water 

 or wine and dyed," etc. 



