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THE WEST - 1652 |
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1652 - The Complete Herbal by Nicolas Culpeper (1616-1654)
According to one website: "Nicolas Culpeper (1616-1654) expounded on the relationship of astrology and herbs and the older belief in the "Doctrine of Signatures". This belief extending deep into the distant past herbal traditions of the world maintains that there is a relationship between the way a plant appears and the condition for which it is indicated.
Always the physician of the people, Culpeper was the most hated by his professional colleagues because he violated a solemn oath of London’s College of Physicians by translating from the Latin some of the elitist works of the time, notably the Pharmacopoeia which he retitled A Physicall Directory."
Page 6
Culpers Complete Herbal
HEMP.
THIS is so well known to every good housewife in the country, that I shall not need to write any description of it.
Time.] It is sown in the very end of March, or beginning of April, and is ripe in August or September.
Government and virtues.] It is a plant of Saturn, and good for something else, you see, than to make halters only. The seed of Hemp consumes wind, and by too much use therof disperses it so much that it dries up the natural seed for procreation; yet, being boiled in milk and taken, helps such as have a hot dry cough. The Dutch make an emulsion out of the seed, and give it with good success to those that have the jaundice, especially in the beginning of the disease, if there be no ague accomplanying it, for it opens obstructions of the gall, and causes digestion of choler. The emulsion or decoction of the seed stays lasks and continual fluxes, eases the cholic, and allays the troublesome humours in the bowels, and stays bleeding at the mouth, nose, or other places, some of the leaves being fried with the blood of them that bleed, and so given them to eat. It is held very good to kill the worms in men or beasts; and the juice dropped into the ears kills worms in them; and draws forth earwigs, or other living creatures gotten into them. The decoction of the root allays inflammations of the head, or any other parts; the herb itself, or the distilled water thereof doth the like. The decoction of the root eases the pains of the gout, the hard humours of knots in the joints, the pains and shrinking of the sinews, and the pains of the hips. The fresh juice mixed with a little oil and butter, is good for any place that hath been burnt with fire, being thereto applied.--Pg. 91
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