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Earth-Chesnuts

Names. They are called earth-nuts, earth-chesnuts, ground-nuts, ciper-nuts, and in Sussex pig-nuts. A description of them were needless, for every child knows them.

Government and virtues. They are something hot and dry in quality, under the dominion of Venus; they provoke lost exceedingly, and stir up to those sports she is mistress of; the seed is excellent good to provoke urine; and so also is the root, but it doth not perform it so forcibly as the seed doth. The root being dried and beaten into powder, and the powder being made into an electuary is a singular remedy for spitting and pissing of blood, as the former chesnut was for coughs.

CIVES.

Names. Called also rush-leeks, chives, civet, and sweth. Temperature and Virtues. I confess I had not added these, had it not been for a country gentleman, who by a letter, certified me, that amongst other herbs, I had left these out; they are indeed a kind of leeks, hot and dry in the fourth degree, and so under the dominion of Mars: if they be eaten raw, (I do not mean raw opposite to roasted or boiled, but raw, opposite to chymical preparation) they send up very hurtful vapours to the brain, causing troublesome sleep, and spoiling the eyesight, yet of them, prepared by the art of the alchymist, may be made an excellent remedy for the stoppage of urine.