Mentha
HRB-0195Entry “MINT” in the 1850 textIn Culpeper’s 1652 first edition
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.
Historical correspondence. Ruled by Venus, by Culpeper. A traditional astrological assignment, kept apart from the modern evidence; it is not a finding.
What it does, in Culpeper: Stops vomitingCounter-poison
it is good against the gnawing of the heart, provokes appetite, takes away obstructions of the liver, and stirs up bodily lust;
but therefore too much must not be taken, because it makes the blood thin and wheyish, and turns it into choler, and therefore choleric persons must abstain from it.
The virtues of the Wild or Horse Mint, such as grow in ditches (whose description I purposely omitted, in regard they are well known) are serviceable to dissolve wind in the stomach, to help the cholic, and those that are short-winded, and are an especial remedy for those that have veneral dreams and pollutions in the night, being outwardly applied.
It is good against the gravel and stone in the kidneys, and the stranguary.
two or three branches thereof taken in the juice of four pomegranates, stays the hiccough, vomiting, and allays the choler.
It dissolves imposthumes being laid to with barley-meal.
The juice laid on warm, helps the king’s evil, or kernels in the throat.
Pliny saith, that eating of the leaves hath been found by experience to cure the leprosy, applying some of them to the face, and to help the scurf or dandriff of the head used with vinegar.
Simeon Sethi saith, it helps a cold liver, strengthens the belly, causes digestion, stays vomits and hiccough;
Being smelled unto, it is comfortable for the head and memory.
It is also profitable against the poison of venomous creatures.
Pliny saith, that eating of the leaves hath been found by experience to cure the leprosy, applying some of them to the face, and to help the scurf or dandriff of the head used with vinegar.
It suffers not milk to curdle in the stomach, if the leaves thereof be steeped or boiled in it before you drink it.
It is good against the gravel and stone in the kidneys, and the stranguary.
two or three branches thereof taken in the juice of four pomegranates, stays the hiccough, vomiting, and allays the choler.
The virtues of the Wild or Horse Mint, such as grow in ditches (whose description I purposely omitted, in regard they are well known) are serviceable to dissolve wind in the stomach, to help the cholic, and those that are short-winded, and are an especial remedy for those that have veneral dreams and pollutions in the night, being outwardly applied.
The juice dropped into the ears eases the pains of them, and destroys the worms that breed therein.
and they say a wounded man that eats Mint, his wound will never be cured, and that is a long day.
Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, a new edition (London: Thomas Kelly, 1850). Project Gutenberg eBook #49513. SRC-CUL-1850
Quotations are verbatim from the 1850 text, line breaks joined. Modern research and the European regulator’s verdict on each claim are on the Concordance page, kept apart from this historical record.