Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Common Thorough Wax
Description. The root of common Thorough Wax is long, slender, white, and furnished with a few fibres. The first leaves are large, broad, oblong, undivided, and of a blueish green. The flowers stand at the tops of the branches, and are moderately large, and yellow. The seeds are large and round. Place. It is sometimes found in corn-fields, but is not very common. Time. It flowers in August.
Government and virtues. This is under Jupiter, and is accounted most excellent to stay all kinds of fluxes of blood, or humours in man or woman, whether at nose, mouth, or belly. The juice of the herb and root, or the decoction thereof taken with some Venice treacle, and the person laid to sweat, expels any venom or poison, or the plague, fever, or other contagious disease, as pox, measles, &c. for it is an ingredient in all antidotes or counter-poisons.