Rosa
HRB-0246Entry “ROSES” 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 Jupiter, by Culpeper. A traditional astrological assignment, kept apart from the modern evidence; it is not a finding.
What it does, in Culpeper: PurgeStops vomiting
The syrup of dried red Roses strengthens a stomach given to casting, cools an over-heated liver, and the blood in agues, comforts the heart, and resists putrefaction and infection, and helps to stay lasks and fluxes.
as also St. Anthony’s fire, and other diseases of the stomach.
The cordial powders, called Diarrhoden Abbatis and Aromaticum Rosarum, do comfort and strengthen the heart and stomach, procure an appetite, help digestion, stay vomiting, and are very good for those that have slippery bowels, to strengthen them, and to dry up their moisture.
The heads with the seed being used in powder, or in a decoction, stays the lask and spitting of blood.
Some of the younger Conserve taken with mithridate mixed together, is good for those that are troubled with distillations of rheum from the brain to the nose, and defluctions of rheum into the eyes;
The briar ball is often used, being made into powder and drank, to break the stone, to provoke urine when it is stopped, and to ease and help the cholic;
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.
It purges choler without trouble, it is good in hot fevers, and pains of the head arising from hot choleric humours, and heat in the eyes, the jaundice also, and joint-aches proceeding of hot humours.
The decoction of red Roses made with wine and used, is very good for the head-ache, and pains in the eyes, ears, throat, and gums;
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.
The same decoction with the Roses remaining in it, is profitably applied to the region of the heart to ease the inflammation therein;
It purges choler without trouble, it is good in hot fevers, and pains of the head arising from hot choleric humours, and heat in the eyes, the jaundice also, and joint-aches proceeding of hot humours.
and available against the leprosy, itch, tetters, &c.
Red Roses do strengthen the heart, the stomach and the liver, and the retentive faculty:
and being mixed with the powder of mastich, is very good for the gonorrhea, and for the looseness of the humours in the body.
But briefly, the Electuary is purging, whereof two or three drams taken by itself in some convenient liquor, is a purge sufficient for a weak constitution, but may be increased to six drams, according to the strength of the patient.
They mitigate the pains that arise from heat, assuage inflammations, procure rest and sleep, stay both whites and reds in women, the gonorrhea, or running of the reins, and fluxes of the belly:
as also St. Anthony’s fire, and other diseases of the stomach.
as also St. Anthony’s fire, and other diseases of the stomach.
The briar ball is often used, being made into powder and drank, to break the stone, to provoke urine when it is stopped, and to ease and help the cholic;
Oil of Roses is not only used by itself to cool any hot swellings or inflammations, and to bind and stay fluxes of humours unto sores, but is also put into ointments and plaisters that are cooling and binding, and restraining the flux of humours.
The cordial powders, called Diarrhoden Abbatis and Aromaticum Rosarum, do comfort and strengthen the heart and stomach, procure an appetite, help digestion, stay vomiting, and are very good for those that have slippery bowels, to strengthen them, and to dry up their moisture.
In the middle of the balls are often found certain white worms, which being dried and made into powder, and some of it drank, is found by experience of many to kill and drive forth the worms of the belly.
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.