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CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

   
 

DARNEL

Names. It is called jam and wray; in Sussex they call it crop, it being a pestilent enemy among corn.

Description. This hath, all the winter long, sundry long, flat, and rough leaves, which, when the stalk riseth, which is slender and jointed, are narrower, but rough still; on the top groweth a long spike, composed of many heads set one above another, containing two or three husks, with sharp but short beards or awns at the end; the seed is easily shaked out of the ear, the husk itself being somewhat rough.

Place. The country husbandmen do know this too well to grow among their corn, or in the borders and path-ways of the other fields that are fallow.

Government and virtues. It is a malicious part of sullen Saturn. As it is not without some vices, so hath it also many virtues. The meal of darnel is very good to stay gangrenes, and other such like fretting and eating cankers, and putrid sores: It also cleanseth the skin of all leprosies, morphews, ringworms, and the like, if it be used with salt and raddish roots. And being used with quick brimstone and vinegar, it dissolveth knots and kernels, and breaketh those that are hard to be dissolved, being boiled in wine with pigeon's dung and linseed: A decoction thereof made with water and honey, and the places bathed therewith, is profitable for the sciatica. Darnel meal applied in a poultice draweth forth splinters and broken bones in the flesh: The red darnel, boiled in red wine and taken, stayeth the lask and all other fluxes, and women's bloody issues; and restraineth urine that passeth away too suddenly.

   

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