CND-0091Head, mind and nerves
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.
helps the yellow jaundice, by opening the stoppings of the gall and liver, and melancholy, by opening the stoppings of the spleen;
It makes the heart merry, drives away melancholy, quickens the spirits, is good against quartan agues, stancheth bleeding at mouth and nose, if it be stamped and applied to the nape of the neck;
Seraphio says, it causes the mind and heart to become merry, and revives the heart, faintings and swoonings, especially of such who are overtaken in sleep, and drives away all troublesome cares and thoughts out of the mind, arising from melancholy or black choler;
The roots are very effectual against all melancholy diseases, especially such as are of long standing, as quartan agues and madness;
the leaves, flowers, and seed, all or any of them, are good to expel pensiveness and melancholy;
I take the reason of this to be (according to Fernelius) a melancholy vapour made thin by excessive drinking strong liquor, and, so flies up and disturbs the fancy, and breeds imaginations like itself, viz. fearful and troublesome.
Two or three of the stalks, with leaves put into a cup of wine, especially claret, are known to quicken the spirits, refresh and cheer the heart, and drive away melancholy:
The ashes of Colewort stalks mixed with old hog’s-grease, are very effectual to anoint the sides of those that have had long pains therein, or any other place pained with melancholy and windy humours.
It is profitable for all sorts of agues that come either from phlegm, or melancholy, or from an inflammation of the bowels, being applied when the humours causing them shall be concocted;
It cures quartan agues, and other diseases of melancholy, and adust choler, by sympathy to Saturn, Mars being exalted in Capricorn.
This is accounted the most effectual for melancholy diseases, and to purge black or burnt choler, which is the cause of many diseases of the head and brain, as also for the trembling of the heart, faintings and swoonings.
Some use to drink two or three ounces of the distilled water, with a little sugar put to it, in the morning fasting, to open and purge the body of gross, viscous, and melancholy humours.
and helps the melancholy of the heart, and is available in quartan and quotidian agues;
The powder of the herb taken in wine, with some Oxymel, purges both choler and phlegm, and is available for those that are short winded, and are troubled with melancholy and heaviness, or sadness of spirits.
The powder of the dried herb given for some time together, cures melancholy, but the seed is strongest in operation for all the former diseases.
It is also good against all diseases of the brain, as continual head-ache, falling-sickness, melancholy, drowsiness and dullness of the spirits, convulsions and palsies.
It is also given for the pains and swellings in the head, for those that are troubled with melancholy, and helps the sciatica, gout, and the cramp.
it opens also the obstructions of the spleen, and diminishes the melancholy humour.
a disease which melancholy persons are subject unto:
There is no better herb to take melancholy vapours from the heart, to strengthen it, and make a merry, chearful, blithe soul than this herb.
And being mingled with honey and salt, it voids phlegm out of the lungs, and purges melancholy by the stool.
it is an herb of Saturn, to purge melancholy;
Matthiolus saith, That if a dram of the dust that is on the backside of the leaves be mixed with half a dram of amber in powder, and taken with the juice of purslain or plantain, it helps the gonorrhea speedily, and that the herb and root being boiled and taken, helps all melancholy diseases, and those especially that arise from the French diseases.
It is under Capricorn, and therefore under both Saturn and Mars, one rids melancholy by sympathy, the other by antipathy.
It is also helpful for melancholy, and the black jaundice that arise thereof.
The root or seed is thought to be most effectual to comfort the heart, and expel sadness, or causeless melancholy;
Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, a new edition (London: Thomas Kelly, 1850). Project Gutenberg eBook #49513. SRC-CUL-1850