CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

SCIATICA CRESSES

Description. These are of two kinds; the first riseth up with a round stalk, about two feet high, spread into divers branches, whose lower leaves are somewhat larger than the upper, yet all of them cut or torn on the edges, somewhat like garden cresses, but smaller: the flowers are small and white, growing on the tops of the branches, where afterwards grow husks, with smallish brown seeds therein, very strong and sharp in taste, more than the cresses of the garden. The root is long, white, and woody.

The other sort hath the lower leaves whole, somewhat long and broad, not torn at all, but only somewhat deeply dented about the edges toward the ends, but those that grow up higher are less. The flowers and seed are like the former, and so is the root likewise: and both root and seed as sharp as it.

Place. They grow by the way sides in untilled places, and by the sides of old walls.

Time. They flower in the end of June, and their seed is ripe in July.

Government and virtues. It is a Saturnine plant: the leaves, but especially the roots, taken fresh in the summer time, beaten or made into a poultice or salve with old hog's grease, and applied to the places pained with the sciatica, to continue thereon four hours if it be on a man, and two hours on a woman; the place afterwards bathed with wine and oil mixed together; and then wrapped with wool or skins after they have sweat a little, will assuredly cure not only the same disease in hips, huckle-bone, or other of the joints, as gout in the hands or feet, but all other old griefs of the head, (as inveterate rheums,) and other parts of the body that are hard to be cured. And, if of the former griefs any parts remain, the same medicine after twenty days is to be applied again. The same also is effectual in the diseases of the spleen; and, applied to the skin, it taketh away the blemishes thereof, whether they be scars, leprosy, scabs, or scurf, which, if it ulcerate the part, is to be helped afterwards with a salve made of oil and wax. Either boiled or eaten in sallads, they are very wholesome. for children's scabs or scalded heads, nothing is so effectual and quick a remedy as garden cresses beat up with lard, for it makes the scales fall in twenty-four hours, and perfectly cures them if they continue the use of it. Esteem this as a valuable secret.