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Winter Savory

Description. This is more woody and shrubby than the former, having the leaves more like hyssop, stiffer and harder, and seemingly pierced full of holes, and ending in spinulae; the flowers are of the colour of the former and the seed much alike.

Place. This is likewise cultivated in gardens.

Government and virtues. Mercury claims the government of both these plants. They are both much of a nature, being heating, drying, and carminative, expelling wind from the stomach and bowels, and are good for the asthma and other affections of the breast: thy open obstructions of the womb, and promote the menstrual evacuations. The winter Savory is much used in the kitchen. Neither is there a better remedy for the cholic and iliac passion than this herb: keep it dry by you all the year, if you love yourself and your ease, and it is a hundred pounds to a penny if you do not: keep it dry make conserves and syrups of it for your use; and withal, take notice that the summer kind is the best. They are both of them hot and dry, especially the summer kind, which is both sharp and quick in taste, expelling wind in the stomach and bowels, and is a present help for the rising of the mother procured by wind: provokes urine and women's courses, and is much commended for women with child to take inwardly, and to smell often unto. It cures tough phlegm in the chest and lungs, and helps to expectorate it the more easily; quickens the dull spirits in the lethargy, the juice thereof being snuffed up into the nostrils. The juice dropped into the eyes, clears a dull sight, if it proceed of thin cold humours distilled from the brain.

The juice heated with oil of roses, and dropped into the ears, eases them of the noise and singing in them, and of deafness also; outwardly applied with wheat flour, in manner of a poultice, it gives ease to the sciatic and palsied members, heating and warming them, and takes away their pains. It also takes away the the pain that comes by stinging of bees, wasps, &c.