Herb Of The Week - Spearmint

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From " Culpeper's Complete Herbal " by Nicholas Culpeper, written in the

17th century, published in London in 1814.

 

Available online at Bibliomania

http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/66/113/frameset.html

 

*Smile*

Chris (list mom)

 

http://www.alittleolfactory.com

 

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Mint

 

Of all the kinds of Mint, the Spear Mint, or Heart Mint, being most

usual, I shall only describe as follows:

 

Descript : Spear Mint has divers round stalks, and long but narrowish

leaves set thereon, of a dark green colour. The flowers stand in spiked

heads at the tops of the branches, being of a pale blue colour. The

smell or scent thereof is somewhat near unto Bazil; it encreases by the

root under ground as all the others do.

 

Place : It is an usual inhabitant in gardens; and because it seldom

gives any good seed, the seed is recompensed by the plentiful increase

of the root, which being once planted in a garden, will hardly be rid

out again.

 

Time : It flowers not until the beginning of August, for the most part.

 

Government and virtues : It is an herb of Venus. Dioscorides saith it

hath a healing, binding and drying quality, and therefore the juice

taken in vinegar, stays bleeding. It stirs up venery, or bodily lust;

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. It is good to repress the

milk in women's breasts, and for such as have swollen, flagging, or

great breasts. Applied with salt, it helps the biting of a mad dog; with

mead and honeyed water, it eases the pains of the ears, and takes away

the roughness of the tongue, being rubbed thereupon. It suffers not milk

to curdle in the stomach, if the leaves thereof be steeped or boiled in

it before you drink it. Briefly it is very profitable to the stomach.

The often use hereof is a very powerful medicine to stay women's courses

and the whites. Applied to the forehead and temples, it eases the pains

in the head, and is good to wash the heads of young children therewith,

against all manner of breakings-out, sores or scabs, therein. It is also

profitable against the poison of venomous creatures. The distilled water

of Mint is available to all the purposes aforesaid, yet more weakly. But

if a spirit thereof be rightly and chymically drawn, it is much more

powerful than the herb itself. Simeon Sethi saith, it helps a cold

liver, strengthens the belly, causes digestion, stays vomits and

hiccough; 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. It is a safe medicine for the biting of a

mad dog, being bruised with salt and laid thereon. The powder of it

being dried and taken after meat, helps digestion, and those that are

splenetic. Taken with wine, it helps women in their sore travail in

child-bearing. It is good against the gravel and stone in the kidneys,

and the stranguary. Being smelled unto, it is comfortable for the head

and memory. The decoction hereof gargled in the mouth, cures the gums

and mouth that are sore, and mends an ill-savoured breath; as also the

Rue and Coriander, causes the palate of the mouth to turn to its place,

the decoction being gargled and held in the mouth.

 

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. They are good against the

venomous biting of serpents. The juice laid on warm, helps the king's

evil, or kernels in the throat. The decoction or distilled water helps a

stinking breath, proceeding from corruption of the teeth, and snuffed up

the nose, purges the head. 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. They are extremely bad for wounded people; and they say a

wounded man that eats Mint, his wound will never be cured, and that is a

long day.