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CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

 

BROOM AND BROOM-RAPE

To spend time in writing a description hereof is altogether needless, it being so generally used by all the good housewives almost through this land to sweep their houses with, and therefore very well known to all sorts of people.

The broom-rape springeth up in many places from the roots of the broom, but more often in fields, or by hedge-sides, and on heaths. The stalk thereof is of the bigness of a finger or thumb, above two feet high, having a show of leaves on them, and many flowers at the top, of a deadish yellow colour, as also the stalks and leaves are.

Place. They grow in many places of this land commonly, and as commonly spoil all the land they grow in.

Time. They flower in summer months, and give their seed before winter.

Government and virtues. The juice or decoction of the young branches or seed, or the powder of the seed taken in drink, purgeth downwards and draweth phlegmatic and watery humours from the joints, whereby it helpeth the dropsy, gout, sciatica, and pains in the hips and joints; it also provoketh strong vomits, and helpeth the pains of the sides, and swellings of the spleen; cleanseth also the reins or kidneys, and bladder of the stone, provoketh urine abundantly, and hindereth the growing again of the stone in the body. The continual use of the powder of the leaves and seed doth cure the black jaundice; the distilled water of the flowers is profitable for all the same purposes; it also helpeth surfeits, and altereth the fit of agues, if three or four ounces thereof, with as much of the water of the smaller centaury, and a little sugar put therein, be taken a little before the fit cometh, and the party be laid down to sweat in bed. The oil or water that is drawn from the ends of the green sticks heated in the fire, helps the tooth-ach. The juice of the young branches made into an ointment of old hog's grease, and anointed, or the young branches bruised and heated in oil or hog's grease, and laid to the sides pained by wind, as in stitches, or the spleen, easeth them in once or twice using; the same, boiled in oil, is the safest and surest medicine to kill lice in the head or body; and is an especial remedy for joint-aches and swollen knees that come by the falling down of humours.

The broom-rape also is not without its virtues. The decoction thereof in wine, is thought to be as effectual to void the stone in the kidney and bladder, and to provoke urine, as the broom itself. The juice thereof is a singular good help to cure as well green wounds as old and filthy sores and malignant ulcers; the insolate oil, wherein there has been three or four repetitions of infusion of the top stalks with the flowers strained and cleared, cleanseth the skin from all manner of spots, marks, and freckles, that arise either by the heat of the sun, or the malignity of humours. As for the broom and broom-rape, Mars owns them; and it is exceeding prejudicial to the liver. I suppose by reason of the antipathy between Jupiter and Mars: therefore, if the liver be disaffected, administer none of it.


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