CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

SPLEEN-WORT

Description. This is a small plant, consisting only of leaves, which spring from a fibrous root: they are about three or four inches long, hardly half an inch broad cut into small roundish segments, which stand not opposite ot one another, but alternately; they are of a greenish colour on the upper side, and brownish, and full of dusty seed underneath, generally crumpled or folded inward, in shape somewhat like the insect Scolopendra, whence it takes one of the names.

Place. It grows as well upon stone walls, as moist and shadowy places, about Bristol, and other the west parts plentifully; as also in Framlingham Castle, on Beaconsfield church in Berkshire, at Stroude in Kent, and elsewhere.

Time. It abides green all the winter.

Government and virtues. Saturn owns it. It is generally used against infirmities of the Spleen. It helps the stranguary, and wasteth the stone in the bladder, and is good against the yellow jaundice and the hiccough; but the juice of it in women hinders conception. Matthiolus says, that if a drachm of the dust that is on the backside of leaves be mixed with half a drachm of amber in powder, and taken with the juice of purslain or plantain, it helps the gonorrhea speedily, and that the herb and root being boiled and taken, helps all melancholy diseases, and those especially that arise from the venereal disease. Camerarius says, That the distilled water thereof being drank, is very effectual against the stone in the reins and bladder; and that the lye that is made of the ashes thereof being drank for some time together, helps splenetic persons. It is used in outward remedies for the same purpose. This is one of the five capiliary plants, ex re nomen habens, having its name from its good effect, in curing diseases of the spleen, taking away the swellings thereof, and hindering its too great largeness, whence likewise it is called Miltwaste: it likewise opens obstructions of th eliver, helps the jaundice, and is very good for the rickets in children.