United States or Serbia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The roots of birthwort, either long or round, so used and taken as the former, are very good. Take twelve peony seeds, and beat them into a very fine powder, and let her drink them in a draught of hot cardus posset, and let her sweat after. And if the last medicine do not bring them down the first time she takes it, let her take as much more three hours after, and it seldom fails.

If this have not the desired effect, then the following plaster should be applied: Take an ounce and a half of balganum, two drachms of colocynth, half an ounce each of the juice of motherwort and of rue, and seven ounces of virgin bees' wax: pound and melt them together, spreading them on a cere-cloth so that they may spread from the navel to the os pubis and extending to the flanks, at the same time making a pessary of wood, enclosing it in a silk bag, and dipping it in a decoction of one drachm each of sound birthwort, savin colocinthis, stavescare and black hellebore, with a small sprig or two of rue.

Take water of green wheat, six ounces, syrup diascordium, three ounces, take two or three spoonfuls going to bed every night or every other night. An Electuary for the Dropsy. Take best rhubarb, one drachm, gum lac, prepared, two drachms, zyloaloes, cinnamon, long birthwort, half an ounce each, best English saffron, half a scruple; with syrup of chicory and rhubarb make an electuary.

COLUMBINE. The Leaves, Flowers, and Seeds. It has been looked upon as aperient; and was formerly in great esteem among the common people for throwing out the small-pox and measles. A distilled water, medicated vinegar, and conserve, were prepared from the flowers; but they have long given place to medicines of greater efficacy. ARISTOLOCHIA longa. LONG BIRTHWORT. The Roots.

And, as in divers plants and trees there are two sexes, male and female, which is perceptible in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, the daffodil, mandrake, fern, the agaric, mushroom, birthwort, turpentine, pennyroyal, peony, rose of the mount, and many other such like, even so in this herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet it is very copious of and abundant in seed.

Then anoint the privities and loins with ointment of sow-bread. Or, take coloquintida, agaric, birthwort, of each a drachm; make a powder, add ammoniacum dissolved in wine, ox-gall, each two drachms. Or make a fume with an ass's hoof burnt, or gallianum, or castor, and let it be taken in with a funnel.

Take savine, round birthwort, trochisks of myrrh, castor, cinnamon and saffron, each half a drachm; make a powder, give a drachm. Or she may purge first, and then apply an emollient, anointing her about the womb with oil of lilies, sweet almonds, camomiles, hen and goose-grease. Also foment to get out the child, with a decoction of mercury, orris, wild cucumbers, saecus, broom flowers.

Thus, in Pleurisy and the Rheumatics they make several Punctures on the part affected with a Red-hot Needle; and into simple Gun-shot Wounds they pour Fresh Butter almost boiling hot. The Prickly Pear roasted in Ashes is applied to Bruises, Swellings, and Inflammations; and a dram or two of the Round Birthwort is esteemed the best remedy in the world for the Choler.