SAVINE.
To describe a plant so well known is needless, it being nursed up almost in every garden, and abides green all the Winter.
Government and virtues.] It is under the dominion of Mars, being hot and dry in the third degree, and being of exceeding clean parts, is of a very digesting quality. If you dry the herb into powder, and mix it with honey, it is an excellent remedy to cleanse old filthy ulcers and fistulas; but it hinders them from healing. The same is excellently good to break carbuncles and plague-sores; also helps the king’s evil, being applied to the place. Being spread over a piece of leather, and applied to the navel, kills the worms in the belly, helps scabs and itch, running sores, cankers, tetters, and ringworms; and being applied to the place, may haply cure venereal sores. This I thought good to speak of, as it may be safely used outwardly, for inwardly it cannot be taken without manifest danger.
THE COMMON WHITE SAXIFRAGE.
Descript.] This hath a few small reddish kernels of roots covered with some skins, lying among divers small blackish fibres, which send forth divers round, faint or yellow green leaves, and greyish underneath, lying above the grounds, unevenly dented about the edges, and somewhat hairy, every one upon a little foot-stalk, from whence rises up round, brownish, hairy, green stalks, two or three feet high, with a few such like round leaves as grow below, but smaller, and somewhat branched at the top, whereon stand pretty large white flowers of five leaves a-piece, with some yellow threads in the middle, standing in a long crested, brownish green husk. After the flowers are past, there arises sometimes a round hard head, forked at the top, wherein is contained small black seed, but usually they fall away without any seed, and it is the kernels or grains of the root which are usually called the White Saxifrage-seed, and so used.
Place.] It grows in many places of our land, as well in the lower-most, as in the upper dry corners of meadows, and grassy sandy places. It used to grow near Lamb’s conduit, on the backside of Gray’s Inn.
Time.] It flowers in May, and then gathered, as well for that which is called the seed, as to distil, for it quickly perishes down to the ground when any hot weather comes.
Government and virtues.] It is very effectual to cleanse the reins and bladder, and to dissolve the stone engendered in them, and to expel it and the gravel by urine; to help the stranguary; for which purpose the decoction of the herb or roots in white wine, is most usual, or the powder of the small kernelly root, which is called the seed, taken in white wine, or in the same decoction made with white wine, is most usual. The distilled water of the whole herb, root and flowers, is most familiar to be taken. It provokes also women’s courses, and frees and cleanses the stomach and lungs from thick and tough phlegm that trouble them. There are not many better medicines to break the stone than this.
BURNET SAXIFRAGE.
Descript.] The greater sort of our English Burnet Saxifrage grows up with divers long stalks of winged leaves, set directly opposite one to another on both sides, each being somewhat broad, and a little pointed and dented about the edges, of a sad green colour. At the top of the stalks stand umbels of white flowers, after which come small and blackish seed. The root is long and whitish, abiding long. Our lesser Burnet Saxifrage hath much finer leaves than the former, and very small, and set one against another, deeply jagged about the edges, and of the same colour as the former. The umbels of the flowers are white, and the seed very small, and so is the root, being also somewhat hot and quick in taste.