Zerobabel Endecott
Who would know the virtues of the herbs and simples that grew in the gardens of the Massachusetts Bay? Many herbals have been compiled and printed, none more enticing than Nicholas Culpepper's "English Herbals," more truly entitled "The English Physician Enlarged," and first published in 1653. It had an enormous sale. Since that year twenty-one different editions have served their day, the last having been printed at Exeter, N.H., as late as 1824.
Culpepper, the son of a clergyman, was born in London in 1616 and died when only thirty-eight years old. In that short time, however, he gained fame as a writer on astrology and medicine. At first apprenticed to an apothecary, he later set up for himself as a physician and acquired a high reputation among his patients.
In his catalogue of the simples he premises a few words to the reader, viz.: "Let a due time be observed (cases of necessity excepted) in gathering all Simples: for which take these few Rules. All Roots are of most virtue when the Sap is down in them, viz. towards the latter end of the summer, or beginning of the spring, for happily in Winter many of them cannot be found: you may hang up many of them a drying, by drawing a string through them, and so keep them a whole year.
"Herbs are to be gathered when they are fullest of juyce, before they run up to seeds; and if you gather them in a hot sunshine-day, they will not be so subject to putrifie: the best way to dry them, is in the Sun, according to Dr. Reason, though not according to Dr. Tradition: Such Herbs as remain green all the year, or are very full of juyce, it were a folly to dry at all, but gather them only for present use, as Houseleek, Scurvy-grass, etc.
"Let flowers be gathered when they are in their prime, in a sunshine-day, and dryed in the sun. Let seeds be perfectly ripe before they be gathered.
"Let them be kept in a dry place: for any moysture though it be but a moist ayr, corrupts them, which if perceived in time, the beames of the Sun will refresh them again."
Ageratum dryes the brain, helps the green sickness, and profit such as have a cold or weak Liver: outwardly applyed, it takes away the hardnesse of the matrix, and fills hollow ulcers with flesh.