Many of the remedies for different ailments strike the modern reader as being violent in a terrifying degree, and adapted to a more robust age than the present; they incline one to echo the words, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” But apparently the sixteenth century held an exactly corresponding view of its predecessors, for under the heading of “whyte elebore” we read, “In olde tyme it was commely used in medycyns as we use squamony. For the body of man was stronger than it is now, and myght better endure the vyolence of elebore, for man is weyker at this time of nature.”
Text-fig. 21. “Nenufar” = Waterlily [The Grete Herball, 1529].
It is somewhat remarkable that both Christianity and Greek mythology find a place in the Grete Herball. The discovery of Artemisia and its virtues is attributed to Diana and the Centaurs, but in the event of being bitten by a mad dog, the sufferer is recommended to appeal to the Virgin Mary before employing any remedy. “As sone as ye be byten go to the chyrche, and make thy offrynge to our lady, and pray here to helpe and heale thee. Than rubbe ye sore with a newe clothe,” etc.
Quite a number of medicines enumerated in the Grete Herball still hold their own in modern practice. Liquorice is recommended for coughs; laudanum, henbane, opium and lettuces as narcotics; olive oil and slaked lime for scalds; cuttle-fish bone for whitening the teeth, and borax and rose water for the complexion.
This book throws an interesting light on the early names of British plants. The Primrose is called “Prymerolles” or “saynt peterworte.” The “devylles bytte” is said to be “so called by cause the rote is blacke and semeth that it is iagged with bytynge, and some say that the devyll had envy at the vertue therof and bete the rote so for to have destroyed it.” Duckweed is called “Lentylles of the water” or “frogges fote,” while Cuckoo-pint is known by the picturesque name of “prestes hode,” and Wood-sorrel is called “Alleluya” or “cukowes meate.”
One of the most noticeable features of the herbal is the exposure of methods of “faking” drugs, for the protection of the public, “to eschew ye frawde of them that selleth it.” This is a great step in advance from the days of the old Greek herbalists, when secrecy was part of the stock-in-trade of a druggist, and, as we have pointed out in a previous chapter, the credulous public was warned off by threats of the miraculous and fearful ills, which would follow any unskilled meddling with the subject.
Another work, which was illustrated with the same figures as those of the Grete Herball, was ‘The vertuose boke of Distillacyon of the waters of all maner of Herbes,’ which appeared in 1527. This was a translation by Laurence Andrew from the ‘Liber de arte distillandi’ of Hieronymus Braunschweig, to which we have already referred. It was almost entirely occupied with an account of methods of distillation, but occasionally there is a picturesque touch of description. For example, in speaking of the Mistletoe, the author says, “This herbe hath a longe slender lefe nother full grene, nor ful yelowe, and bereth a small whyte berye.” The book was printed “in the flete strete by me Laurens Andrewe, in the sygne of the golden Crosse.”