CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

COMMON BROAD-LEAVED WORMWOOD

Description. The root of this Wormwood is thick and woody, divided into several branches, enduring many years, and holding its lower leaves all the winter, which are large and winged, and divided into a great number of small parts, very much cut in; greenish above, and white or hoary underneath. In the summer it shoots out several woody, striated, hoary stalks, two or three feet high, full of white pith, having several lesser leaves growing on them; those towards the top, are long, narrow, and but little indented. The flowers rise among these in a kind of loose spikes at the tops of the stalks and look naked; they are of a brownish yellow, and grow many together, hanging down their heads and including very small seed. The whole plant has a very bitter taste.

Place. A wild plant, and frequent by way-sides, ditch-banks, and in church-yards.

Time. It flowers in July and August.

Government and virtues. It is a martial herb, as before observed. This is generally believed to be the Absinthium Ponticum of the ancients, the best Wormwood being supposed to grow in Pontus, a country of the Lesser Asia. The tops of the plant are to be used fresh gathered: a very slight infusion of them is excellent for all disorders of the stomach, and will prevent sickness after meals, and create an appetite: but if it is made too strong, it will revolt and disgust the taste. The tops with the flowers on them, dried and powdered, are good against agues, and have the same virtues with wormseed in killing worms; in fact, they are much better than the wormseed that is commonly sold in the shops, which is generally too much decayed. The juice of the large leaves of Wormwood which grow from the root, before the stalk appears, is the best against dropsy and jaundice, for it opens obstructions, and works powerfully by urine. IT is good in all agues, for which it is given in decoction or infusion, in water, ale, wine, or in the juice only; but its infusion, in wine or ale (if the disease will allow of malt liquors) is an easy, and as good a preparation as any. Its simple distilled water is good for little. There is little more in its salt obtained by incineration, than in any other lixivial salt. Its decoction, wine, extract, nd both oils, are good, and its compound water not bad. Its juice is more watery and detergent, the herb more astringent, only the dried herb should be infused in wine or ale. The infusion, drank evening and morning for some time, helps hysterics, obstructions of the spleen, and weakness of the stomach. Its oil, taken on sugar, and somewhat drank after, kills worms, resists poison, and is good for the liver and jaundice. The use of the herb checks immoderate venery. The root has a slow bitterness, which affects not the head and eyes, like the leaves; hence the root should be accounted among the best stomachics. Oil of the seed, given from half a scruple to half a drachm, in some liquor, or a spoonful of the juice in som wine, taken before the fit comes on, and the person is put to bed, cures quotidians and quartans. In a looseness from eating too much fruit (after the use of rhubarb) Wormwood wine is excellent. A woman raised, spread, and maintained her reputation for the cure of a megrim, by only using a fomentation to the part, of green roots of wild cucumber sliced, and Wormwood of each alike, boiled in two parts water, and one oil; strain and use, and lay a poultice of the strained-out herbs to the part, after it is fomented. A fomentation of Wormwood boiled in water, and strained, has been successfully applied to a spreading gangrene. Green Wormwood, worn in the shoes, has been found useful in cold distempers of the stomach. Its ashes, infused three hours in white wine, strained, and drank often, cures an anasarcs. Whenever you have any great expectation from the use of Wormwood, always order the common sort, for the Roman comes far short of it in virtue. That hot rheum which runs down from the eyes, and excoriates the skin of the cheeks, is cured by juice of Wormwood beaten up with the white of an egg, and applied. A too habitual and free internal use of this herb dims the sight for some hours. Poultices of Wormwood boiled in grease, barm, or wine, may be applied with good success to white swellings. Being boiled in lard, and laid to swellings of the tonsils and quinsy, is serviceable. A poultice of the soft leaves, beaten up with whites of eggs, is good in a strain; or if it is boiled in ale, and laid on; or a poultice of wheat-bran boiled in vinegar; or a tincture of dried roses in vinegar, used with wet clothes to the part. Its internal use is good in such diseases as come from a gross blood, or obstructions in teh capillaries, or in viscidities, or phlegm, which line the insides of the stomach, bowels, or vessels, or in too great a sharpness of the blood, by its opening obstructions, cleansing, bracing, and promoting perspiration and urine. It is admirable against surfeits. It not only cures pain of the stomach, weakness, indigestion, want of appetite, vomiting and loathing, but hard swellings of the belly. This, with rosemaary, saffron, and turmeric root infused in rhenish wine, is a cure for the jaundice, and brings down the menses; or a decoction of it, broom-tops, greater celandine, white horehound, lesser centaury, flowers of hypericon, barberry-bark turmeric, and madder-roots, strained, and hog-lice wine added, is not ill in a jaundice. Wormwood and vinegar are an antidote to the mischief of mushrooms and henbane, and to the biting of a shrew, and of the sea-fish called Draco marinus, or quaviver; mixed with honey, it takes away the blackness after falls, bruises, &c. All other Wormwoods, the nearer they approach in taste to pleasant or palatable, they are so much the worse, for they are weaker, their use requires so much longer time, larger doses, and yet less success follows. The herb and pellitory of the wall boiled in water till soft, then strained, and anointed, cures the pains of the back. Placed among woollen clothes, it prevents and destroys the moths.