Important: Safety Warning
This page describes preparations historically taken to end pregnancy or "bring on the menses." These substances do not work as claimed and are seriously toxic; their use has caused poisoning and death.
In addition, 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.
Home › Contents › Purple Sea Rocket
Purple Sea Rocket
Name. Called also red buny.
Description. This is a tall plant, with long leaves deeply divided into segments; they have large veins, and are of a deep green. The stalk is thick, tough, and of a pale green. The flowers are purple, and grow in spikes at the tops of the stalks. The whole plant has a disagreeable smell. Place. It is an annual, frequent in salt marshes, and about the sea-coast in Cornwall, and the Isle of Man.
Time. It flowers in July.
Government and virtues. It is a martial plant, of a hot nature, and bitterish taste, opening and attenuating, good to cleanse the lungs of tough, viscid phlegm, and of great service in asthmas, and difficulty of breathing; and are often used as a vomit to clear the stomach, and help the jaundice and dropsy: they likewise provoke urine and the catamenia.