CND-0068Fevers and infections
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 stalks or roots candied and eaten fasting, are good preservatives in time of infection;
It is a special help to defend the heart from noisome vapours, and from infection of the pestilence, the juice thereof being taken in some drink, and the party laid to sweat thereupon.
The antidote used by Mithridates, every morning fasting, to secure himself from any poison or infection, was this:
eases all inward gripings and pains, dissolves wind, and resists poison and infection.
Half a dram, or a dram at most, in powder of the roots hereof taken in wine and vinegar, of each equal parts, and the party laid presently to sweat thereupon, is held to be a sovereign remedy for those that are infected with the plague, and have a sore upon them, by expelling the poison and infection, and defending the heart and spirits from danger.
The juice being snuffed up into the nostrils, purges the head, and helps the lethargy, (yet the often eating them is said to procure pains in the head.) It hath been held by divers country people a great preservative against infection, to eat Onions fasting with bread and salt:
Our Lady’s Thistle is under Jupiter, and thought to be as effectual as Carduus Benedictus for agues, and to prevent and cure the infection of the plague:
The old Conserve mixed with Aromaticum Rosarum, is a very good cordial against faintings, swoonings, weakness, and tremblings of the heart, strengthens, both it and a weak stomach, helps digestion, stays casting, and is a very good preservative in the time of infection.
Four ounces of the clarified juice of Scabious taken in the morning fasting, with a dram of mithridate, or Venice treacle, frees the heart from any infection of pestilence, if after the taking of it the party sweat two hours in bed, and this medicine be again and again repeated, if need require.
the candied root hereof are held as effectual as Angelica, to preserve from infection in the time of a plague, and to warm and comfort a cold weak stomach.
Listed in the 1850 index; the herbal entry has no sentence naming this complaint. No quotation is recorded.
for it resists the force of the infection, and allays the heat:
Caias Pompeius found in the treasury of Mithridates, king of Pontus, when he was overthrown, a scroll of his own hand writing, containing a medicine against any poison or infection;
Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, a new edition (London: Thomas Kelly, 1850). Project Gutenberg eBook #49513. SRC-CUL-1850