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.
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Sweet Woodruffe
Description. This has a spreading fibrous root, with a square stock, upright, not much branched, and eight inches high; it is of a pale green, and of a tender substance. The leaves, like the former, are placed at the joints in a stellated manner, but more considerable in the number together, and they are broader and larger; they are sharp pointed, smooth, and of a dark green. The flowers are small and white, but a variety is sometimes found with pale blue flowers. The seeds are small and round.
Virtues. The Woodruffe is accounted nourishing and restorative, and good for weakly consumptive people: it opens obstructions of the liver and spleen, and is said to be a provocative to venery.