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Juniper Bush

For to give a description of a bush so commonly known is needless. Place. They grow plentifully in divers woods in Kent, Warney Common, near Brentwood, in Essex, upon Finckley Common without Highgate; hard by the New-found Wells, near Dulwich, upon a common between Mitcham and Croydon, in the Highgate, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and many other places. Time. The berries are not ripe the first year, but continue green two summers and one winter before they are ripe; at which time they are all of a black colour, and therefore you shall always find upon the bush green berries; the berries are ripe about the fall of the leaf.

Government and virtues. This admirable Solar shrub is scarce to paralleled for its virtues. The berries are hot in the third degree, and dry but in the first, being a most admirable counter-poison, and as great resister of the pestilence, as any that grows; they are excelent good against the bitings of venomous beasts; they provoke urine exceedingly, and therefore are very available to dysuries and stranguries. It is so powerful a remedy, against the droysy, that the very lee made of the ashes of the herb being drank, cures the disease. It provokes the terms, helps the fits of the mother, strengthens the stomach exceedingly, and expels the wind. Indeed there is scarce a better remedy for wind in any part of the body, or the cholic, than the chymical oil drawn from the berries; such country people as know not how to draw the chymical oil, may content themselves by eating ten or a dozen of the ripe berries every morning fasting. They are admirable good for a cough, shortness of breath and consumption, pains in the belly, ruptures, cramps, and convulsions. They give safe and speedy delivery to women with child, they strengthen the brain exceedingly, help the memory, and fortify the sight by strengthening the optic nerves; are excellent good in all sorts of agues; help the gout and sciatica, and strengthen all the limbs of the body. The ashes of the wood, is a speedy remedy to such as have the scurvy, to rub their gums with. The berries stay all fluxes, help the haemorrhoids or piles, and kill worms in children. A lee made of the ashes of the wood, and the body bathed with it, cures the itch, scabs and leprosy. The berries break the stone, procure appetite when it is lost, and are excellent good for all palsies, and falling-sickness.

I.V Y.

It is so well known, to every child almost, to grow in woods upon the trees, and upon the stone walls of churches, houses, &c. and sometimes to grow alone of itself, though but seldom.

Time. It flowereth not until July, and the berries are not ripe till Christmas, when they have felt the winter frosts.

Government and virtues. It is under the dominion of Saturn. A pugil of the flowers, which may be about a dram, (saith Dioscorides) drank twice a day in red wine, helpeth the lask, and bloody-flux. It is an enemy to the nerves and sinews, being much taken inwardly but very helpful unto them, being outwardly applied. Pliny saith, the yellow berries are good against the jaundice; and taken before one be set to drink hard, preserveth from drunkenness, and helpeth those that spit blood; and that the white berries being taken inwardly, or applied outwardly, killeth worms in the belly. The berries are a singular remedy to prevent the plague, as also to free them from it that have got it, by drinking the berries thereof made into a powder, for two or three days together. They being taken in wine, do certainly help to break the stone, provoke urine, and women's courses. The fresh leaves of ivy, boiled in vinegar, and applied warm to the sides of those that are troubled with the spleen, ach, or stitch in the sides, do give much ease: The same applied with some rose-water, and oil of roses to the temples and forehead, easeth the head-ach, though it be of long continuance. The fresh leaves boiled in wine, and old filthy ulcers hard to be cured washed therewith, do wonderfully help to cleanse them. It also quickly healeth green wounds, and is effectual to heal all burnings, scaldings, and all kinds of exulcerations coming thereby, or by salt phlegm or humours in other parts of the body. The juice of the berries or leaves snuffed up into the nose, purgeth the head and brain of thin rheum that maketh defluctions into the eyes and nose, and cureth the ulcers and stench therein; the same dropped into the ears, helpeth the old and running sores of them; those that are troubled with the spleen, shall find much ease by continual drinking out of a cup made of ivy, so as the drink may stand some small time there-in it before it be drank. Cato saith, that wine put into such a cup, will soon soak through it, by reason of the antipathy that is between them.

There seems to be a very great antipathy between wine and ivy; for if one hath got a surfeit by drinking of wine, his speediest cure is to drink a draught of the same wine wherein a handful of ivy leaves, being first bruised, have been boiled.