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Sect. II: Preserves
CHAP. VIII. Of Preserves.
Of Preserves are sundry sorts, and the operations of all being somewhat different, we shall handle them all apart. These are preserved with sugar: 1. Flowers. 2. Fruits. 3. Roots. 4. Barks. 1. Flowers are very seldom preserved: I never saw any that I remember, save only cowslip flowers, and that was a great fashion in Sussex when I was a boy. It is thus done: Take a flat glass, we call them jar-glasses; strew in a laying of fine sugar, on that a laying of fine flowers, on that another laying of sugar, on that another laying of flowers, so do till your glass be full; then tie it over with paper, and in a little time you shall have very excellent and pleasant conserves.
There is another way of preserving flowers; namely, with vinegar and salt, as they pickle capers and broom buds; but as I have little skill in it myself, I cannot teach you. 2. Fruits, as quinces, and the like, are preserved two ways. (1.) Boil them well in water, and then pulp them through a sieve, as we shewed you before; then with the like quantity of sugar, boil the water they were boiled in into a syrup, viz. a pound of sugar to a pint of liquor; to every pound of this syrup add four ounces of the pulp; then boil it with a very gentle fire to their right consistence, which you may easily know, if you drop a drop upon a trencher; if it be enough, it will not stick to your fingers when it is cold. (2.) Another way to preserve fruits is this: First, pare off the rind; then cut them in halves, and take out the core; then boil them in water till they are soft; if you know when beef is boiled enough, you may easily know when they are, then boil the water with its like weight of sugar into a syrup; put the syrup into a pot, and put the boiled fruit as whole as you left it when you put it into it, and let it remain till you have occasion to use it. 3. Roots are thus preserved: First, scrape them very clean, and cleanse them from the pith, if they have any, for some roots have not, as eryngo and the like; boil them in water till they be soft, as we shewed you before in the fruits; then boil the water you boiled the root in to a syrup, as we shewed you before; then keep the root whole in the syrup till you use them. 4. As for the barks, we have but few come to our hands to be done, and of those the few that I can remember, are oranges, lemons, citrons, and the outer barks of wallnuts, which grow withoutside the shell, for the shells themselves would make but scurvy preserves; these be they I can remember, if there be any more, put them in the number.
The way of preserving these, is not all one in authors, for some are bitter, some are hot; such as are bitter, say authors, must be soaked in warm water, oftentimes changing till their bitter taste is fled; but I like not this way, and my reason is this, because I doubt when their bitterness is gone, so is their virtue also; I shall then prescribe one common way, namely, the same with the former, viz. first boil them whole till they be soft, then make a syrup of sugar and the liquor you boiled them in, and keep the barks in the syrup. 5. They are kept in glasses, or glazed pots. 6. The preserved flowers will keep a year, if you can forbear eating of them; the root and barks much longer. 7. This art was plainly and first invented for delicacy, yet came afterwards to be of excellent use in physic: for, (1.) Hereby medicines are made pleasant for sick and squeamish stomachs, which else loath them. (2.) Hereby they are preserved from decaying a long time. CHAP. IX. Of Lohocks. 1. That which the Arabians call Lohocks, and the Greeks Eclegma, the Latins called Linctus, and in plain English signifies nothing else but a thing to be licked up. 2. Their first invention was to prevent and remedy afflictions of the breast and lungs, to cleanse the lungs of phlegm, and make it fit to be cast out. 3. They are in a body thicker than a syrup, and not so thick as an electuary. 4. The manner of taking them is, often to take a little with liquorice-stick, and let it go down at leisure.
They are easily thus made: Make a decoction of pectoral herbs, and the treatise will furnish you with enough, and when you have strained it, with twice its weight of honey or sugar, boil it to a lohock; if you are molested with much phlegm, honey is better than sugar; and if you add a little vinegar to it, you will do well; if not, I hold sugar to be better than honey. 6. It is kept in pots, and may be kept a year or longer. 7. It is excellent for roughness of the windpipe, inflammations and ulcers of the lungs, difficulty of breathing, asthmas, and distillations of humours. CHAP. X. Of Ointments. 1. Various are the ways for making ointments, which authors have left to posterity, which I shall omit, and quote one which is easiest to be made, and therefore most beneficial to people that are ignorant in phosic, for whose sake I write this. It is thus done, Bruise those herbs, flowers, or roots, you will make an ointment of, and to two handfuls of your bruised herbs add a pound of hog's grease dried, or cleansed from the skins, beat them very well together in a stone mortar with a wooden pestle, then put it into a stone pot, cover it with paper, and set it either in the sun, or some other warm place, three, four, or five days, that it may melt; then take it out and boil it a little; then, whilst it is hot, strain it out, pressing it very hard in a press, to this grease add as many more herbs bruised as before, let them stand in like manner as long, then boil them as you did before. If you think your ointment not strong enough, you may do it the third and fourth time; yet this I will tell you, the fuller of juice the herbs are, the sooner will the ointment be strong: the last time you boil it, boil it so long till your herbs be crisp, and the juice consumed, then strain it, pressing it hard in a press, and to every pound of ointment add two ounces of turpentine, and as much wax, because grease is offensive to wounds, as well as oil. 2. Ointments are vulgarly known to be kept in pots, and will last above a year, some above two years.
CHAP. XI. Of Plaisters. 1. The Greeks make their plaisters of divers simples, and put metals into most of them, if not all; for, having reduced their metals into powder, they mixed them with that fatty substance whereof the rest of the plaister consisted, whilst it is yet hot, continually stirring it up and down, lest it should sink to the bottom; so they continually stirred it till it was stiff; then they made it up in rolls, which, when they needed for use, they could melt by fire again. 2. The Arabians made up theirs with oil and fat, which needeth not so long boiling. 3. The Greek emplaisters consisted of these ingredients, metals, stones, divers sorts of earth, faces, juices, liquors, seeds, roots, herbs, excrements of creatures, wax, rosin, gums.
CHAP. XII. Of Poultices. 1. Poultices are those kind of things which the Latins call Cataplasmata, and our learned fellows, that if they can read English, that's all, call them Cataplasms, because 'tis a crabbed word few understand; it is indeed a fine kind of medicine to ripen sores. 2. They are made of herbs and roots, fitted for the disease and members afflicted, being chopped small, and boiled in water almost to a jelly; then, adding a little barley-meal, or meal of lupins, and a little oil, or rough sweet suet, which I hold to be better, spread upon a cloth, and apply to the grieved place. 3. Their use is to ease pain, to break sores, to cool inflammations, to dissolve hardness, to ease the spleen, to concoct humours, and dissipate swellings. 4. I beseech you take this caution along with you; use no poultices, (if you can help it) that are of an healing nature, before you have first cleansed the body, because they are subject to draw the humours to them from every part of the body.
CHAP. XIII. Of Troches. 1. The Latins called them Placentula, or little cakes, and the Greeks Proehikos, Kukliskoi, and Artiscoi; they are usually little round flat cakes, or you may make them square if you will. 2. Their first invention was, that powders being so kept, might resist the intermission of air, and so endure pure the longer. 3. Besides, they are easier carried in the pocket of such as travel: as many a man, (for example) is forced to travel, whose stomach is too cool, or at laast not so hot as it should be, which is most proper, for the stomach is never cold till a man is dead; in such a case it is better to carry troches of wormwood, or galengal, in a paper in his pocket, than to take a gallipot along with him. 4. They are made thus: At night when you go to bed, take two drams of fine gum tragacanth; put it into a gallipot, and put half a quarter of a pint of any distilled water fitting for the purpose you would make your troches for, to cover it, and the next morning you shall find it in such a jelly as the Physicians call mucilage: With this you may (with a little pains taking) make a powder into a paste, and that paste into a cake called troches. 5. Having made them, dry them in the shade, and keep them in a pot for your use.
CHAP. XIV. Of Pills. 1. They are called Pilluloe, because they resemble little balls; the Greeks call them Catapotia. 2. It is the opinion of modern Physicians, that this way of making medicines were invented only to deceive the palate, that so, by swallowing them down whole, the bitterness of them might not be perceived, or at least might not be insufferable; and indeed most of their pills, though not all, are very bitter. 3. I am of a clear contrary opinion to this: I rather think they were done up in a hard form, that so they might be the longer digesting, and my opinion is grounded upon reason too, not upon fancy or hearsay. The first invention of pills was to purge the head; now, as I told you before, such infirmities as lie near the passages, were best removed by decoctions, because they pass to the grieved part soonest; so here, if the infirmity lies in the head, or any other remote part, the best way is to use pills, because they are longer in digestion, and therefore better able to call the offending tumour to them. 4. If I should tell you here a long tale of medicines working by sympathy and antipathy, you would not understand a word of it: They that are set to make physicians, may find it in the treatise. All modern physicians know not what belongs to flats and sharps in music, but follow the vulgar road, and call it a hidden quality, because it is hidden from the eyes of dunces, and indeed none but astrologers can give a reason for it; and physic without reason, is like a pudding without fat. 5. The way to make pills is very easy, for with the help of a pestle and mortar, and a little diligence, you may make any powder into pills, either with syrup, or the jelly I told you of before.
CHAP. XV. The way of fitting or applying medicines to compound diseases. 1. In all diseases strengthen the part of the body afflicted. 2. In mixed diseases there lies some difficulty, for sometimes two parts of the body are afflicted with contrary humours, as sometimes the liver is afflicted with choler and water, as when a man hath had the dropsy and yellow jaundice; and this is usually mortal.
In the former, suppose the brain be too cool and moist, and the liver to be hot and dry; thus do: 1. Keep your head outwardly warm. 2. Accustom yourself to the smell of hot herbs. 3. Take a pill that heats the head at night going to bed. 4. In the morning take a decoction that cools the liver, for that quickly passeth the stomach, and is at the liver immediately. 5. Be sure always to fortify the grieved part of the body by sympathetical remedies. 6. Regard the heart, keep that upon the wheels, because the Sun is the foundation of life, and therefore those universal remedies, Aurum Potabile, and Philosopher's Stone, cure all diseases by fortifying the heart.