CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

WHITLOW GRASS

Description. It has an annual fibrous root; the stem is round, branchy, hairy, of a red colour, and four or five inches high; the leaves are pretty numerous; they are small, broadest at the extremity, and divided into three lobes, or segments; their colour is likewise reddish. The flowers terminate the stem and branches, in considerable numbers; they are white, and the contrast between them and the colour of the leaves and stem, renders them very conspicuous, though they are but small. The seeds are numerous, and very minute.

Place. It grows on the roofs of houses, old walls, and among rubbish.

Time. It flowers in April.

Government and virtues. Whitlow-grass is under Jupiter. A strong infusion of the whole plant, fresh gathered, is an excellent sweetener of the blood and juices, and good against scorbutic complaints in general; and there are not wanting well attested accounts of its having cured the king's evil, when the use of it has been preserved in. Those who wish to have it for use all the year, should make a syrup of its juice in the spring, or beat the leaves into a conserve with sugar, for the dried plant loses all its virtues, and it is only to be had fresh for a short space of time in the spring. This plant is accounted a specific against the king's evel, being very much commended by Mr. Boyle for that distemper: and Sir John Colebatch, in his Essay upon acids and alkalies, makes mention of a poor girl at Worcester, afflicted with scrophulous ulcers, who received great benefit from it.