CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

COWSLIPS

Name. Known also by the name of peagles.

Both the wild and garden-cowslips are so well known, that I will neither trouble myself nor the reader with a description of them.

Time. They flower in April and May.

Government and virtues. Venus lays claim to the herb as her own, and it is under the sign Aries, and our city dames know well enough the ointment or distilled water of it adds beauty, or at least restores it when it is lost. The flowers are held to be more effectual than the leaves, and the roots of little use. An ointment being made with them, taketh away spots and wrinkles of the skin, sun-burning, and freckles, and adds beauty exceedingly; they remedy all infirmities of the head coming of heat and wind, as vertigo, ephialtes, false apparitions, phrenzies, falling-sickness, palsies, convulsions, cramps, and pain in the nerves; the roots ease pains in the back and bladder, and open the passage of urine. The leaves are good in wounds, and the flowers take away trembling. If the flowers be not well dried and kept in a warm place, they will soon putrify and look green; have a special eye over them. If you let them see the sun ounce a month, it will do them no harm.

Because they strengthen the brain and nerves, and remedy palsies, the Greeks gave them the name of paralysis. The flowers preserved or conserved, and the quantity of a nutmeg eaten every morning, is a sufficient dose for inward diseases; but for wounds, spots, wrinkles, and sun burning, an ointment is made of the leaves and hog's grease.