Horehound
Description. Common horehound groweth up with square hairy stalks, half a yard or two feet high, set at the joints with two round crumbled rough leaves of a sullen hoary green colour, of a reasonable good scent, but a very bitter taste. The flowers are small, white, and gaping, set in a rough, hard, prickly husk round about the joints, with the leaves from the middle of the stalk upward, wherein afterward is found small round blackish seed. The root is blackish, hard and woody, with many strings, and abideth many years. Place. It is found in many parts of this land, in dry grounds, and waste green places.
Time. It flowereth in July, and the seed is ripe in August. Government and virtues. It is an herb of Mercury. A decoction of the dried herb, with the seed, or the juice of the green herb taken with honey, is a remedy for those that are short winded, have a cough, or are fallen into a consumption, either through long sickness or thin distillations or rheum upon the lungs. It helpeth to expectorate tough phlegm from the chest, being taken from the roots of his or Orris. It is given to women to bring down their courses, to expel their after-birth, and to them that have sore and long travails; as also to those that have taken poison, or are stung or bitten by venomous serpents. The leaves used with honey, purge foul ulcers, stay running or creeping sores, and the growing of the flesh over the nails. It also helpeth pains of the sides. The juice thereof with wine and honey, helpeth to clear the eye-sight, and snuffed up into the nostrils, purgeth away the yellow jaundice, and with a little oil of roses dropped into the ears, easeth the pains of them. Galen saith, it openeth obstructions both of the liver and spleen, and purgeth the breast and lungs of phlegm; and used outwardly it both cleanseth and digesteth. A decoction of horehound (saith Matthiolus) is available for those that have hard livers, and for such as have itches and running tetters. The powder hereof taken, or the decoction, killeth worms. The green leaves bruised, and boiled in old hog's grease into an ointment, healeth the biting of the dogs, abateth the swellings and pains that come by any pricking of thorns, or such like means; and used with vinegar, cleanseth and healeth letters. There is a syrup made of horehound to be had at the apothecaries, very good for old coughs, to rid the tough phlegm: as also to void cold rheums from the lungs of old folks, and for those that are asthmatic or short-winded.