CND-0018Skin
Old claims, quoted verbatim: not medical advice. A warning sits above the claims and never hides them; no warning does not mean safe, only that no source here has flagged the plant.
The inner rind of the Barberry-tree boiled in white wine, and a quarter of a pint drank each morning, is an excellent remedy to cleanse the body of choleric humours, and free it from such diseases as choler causes, such as scabs, itch, tetters, ringworms, yellow jaundice, boils, &c.
Flour of beans and Fenugreek mixed with honey, and applied to felons, boils, bruises, or blue marks by blows, or the imposthumes in the kernels of the ears, helps them all, and with Rose leaves, Frankincense and the white of an egg, being applied to the eyes, helps them that are swollen or do water, or have received any blow upon them, if used with wine.
and being applied with a little wine mixed therewith, it breaks boils, and helps whitlows on the joints.—For all these latter, beginning at sores, cancers, &c.
It helps the plague, sores, boils, and itch, the bitings of mad dogs and venomous beasts, all which infirmities are under Mars;
The leaves used with vinegar, either by itself, or with a little honey, doth help boils, felons, and the hot inflammation that are gathered by their pains, if applied before it be grown too great.
The green leaves bruised, and laid upon any boil or plague sore, doth wonderfully help to draw forth the poison:
the bread and the leaven thereof ripens and breaks imposthumes, boils, and other swellings:
Wheat flour, mixed with the yolk of an egg, honey, and turpentine, doth draw, cleanse and heal any boil, plague, sore, or foul ulcer.
But some do advise to put a little salt for this purpose, being applied with a little hog’s lard, it helps a plague sore, and other boils and pushes.
Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, a new edition (London: Thomas Kelly, 1850). Project Gutenberg eBook #49513. SRC-CUL-1850