Important: Safety Warning
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.
Sickle-Wort
Description. This plant has a small, stringy, fibrous root, from which spring the leaves on long foot stalks; they are five-cornered, resembling somewhat those of the lesser maple, and are serrated about the edges, of a dark green colour, smooth, and shining; its stalks grow to be about a foot high, bare of leaves to the top, on which grow little umbels of five-leaved white flowers, small, and full of stamina, each flower being succeeded by two rough bur-like seed.
Place. It grows in woods and thickets.
Time. It flowers in May. The leaves are used.
Government and virtues. This is one of our prime vulnerary plants, being frequently put in wound-drinks, and traumatic apozems; and is good for ruptures, inward bruises, spitting of blood, or any haemorrhages, and for wounds both inward and outward. It is under Venus.