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Show COMMON GREAT PLANTAIN. 87 MEDICAL USES. Of this plant I shall begin by giving the old opinion ofits virtues : 1. Plantain is good for vicers that are of hard curation, for fluxes, issues, rheums, and rottennesses, and for the bloudy flux : it stayeth bleeding, it heales vp hollow sores and ylcers, as well old as new. 2. The juice or decoction drunken stoppeth the bloudy flux, andall other fluxes of the belly, stoppeth bloody water; also spitting of blood, andallissues of bloud in man or woman, and desire to vomitt. 3. Plantain leaves stampt and used with yelks of egges, stayeth the inordinate flux of the terms, although it haue continued many yeares. 4. The root of plantain, with the seed, boiled in white wine and drunke, openeth the conduits or passages of the liver and kidneys, cures the jaundice, and ulceration of the kidneys and bladder. 5. The juice dropped in the eies cooles the heate and inflam. mation thereof. I find in antient writers many good-morrowes (sayings), which I think not meet to bring into your memorie COMMON GREAT PLANTAIN, againe; as, that three roots will cure one griefe, foure another disease, six hanged about the necke are good for a third; all which are but ridiculous toyes. OR WAYBREAD. PLANTAGO MAJOR. 6. The leaves are singular good to. make a water to wash a sore throat or mouth. 7. The leaves of plantaine stamped and put into oile olive, and set in the hot sun for a moneth together, andafter boiled Class 1V. Tetrandria. ina kettle of seething water, which we call balneum Marie, Order I, Monogynia, Essent. Gen, Cuar. Calyx four-cleft: Limd reflexed: Stamina verylong: Capsule two-celled, cut around. Spec. Cusr. Leaves ovate: Scape round: Spike composed of imbricated floscules. a DESCRIPTION. Ty is a plant with a fibrous root, sending out long oval leaves irregularly subdentate, of a pale green, and ribbed; these are Seven, often five, and sometimes nine: the footstalks are leafy. The flower-stems also proceed from the root, and are a span in height, crowned with a spike ofclustered flowers which are eX+ ceedingly minute. It is common in pastures, and then strained, prevaile against the pains in the eares, and the matrix, being cast with a syringe into the other parts before rehearsed, or the paines of the fundament, as prooued by a learned gentleman, Mr. Godowrus, sergeant surgeon to the queen’s majistie—Old Gerard. It was once received in the Edinburgh, but not in the London Pharmacopeeia, and howfar it may deserve a place in either de. serves here to be inquired. It appears to be the great vulneraryof the ancients, and the leaves are now outwardly used by the com~ mon people to all fresh wounds. It is curious that it is the chief remedy for the cure of thebite of the rattlesnake, for which dise |