The Complete Herbal / To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic.

by Nicholas Culpeper

1. Consider, that all diseases are cured by their contraries, but all parts of the body maintained by their likes: then if heat be the cause of the disease, give the cold medicine appropriated to it; if wind, see how many medicines appropriated to that disease expel wind, and use them.

2. Have a care you use not such medicines to one part of your body which are appropriated to another, for if your brain be over heated, and you use such medicines as cool the heart or liver, you may make bad work.

3. The distilled water of any herb you would take for a disease, is a fit mixture for the syrup of the same herb, or to make any electuary into a drink, if you affect such liquid medicines best; if you have not the distilled water, make use of the decoction.

4. Diseases that lie in the parts of the body remote from the stomach and bowels, it is in vain to think to carry away the cause at once, and therefore you had best do it by degrees; pills, and such like medicines which are hard in the body, are fittest for such a business, because they are longest before they digest.

5. Use no strong medicines, if weak will serve the turn, you had better take one too weak by half, than too strong in the least.

6. Consider the natural temper of the part of the body afflicted, and maintain it in that, else you extinguish nature, as the heart is hot, the brain cold, or at least the coldest part of the body.

7. Observe this general rule; That such medicines as are hot in the first degree are most habitual to our bodies, because they are just of the heat of our blood.

8. All opening medicines, and such as provoke urine or the menses, or break the stone, may most conveniently be given in white wine, because white wine of itself is of an opening nature, and cleanses the veins.

9. Let all such medicines as are taken to stop fluxes or looseness, be taken before meat, about an hour before, more or less, that so they may strengthen the digestion and retentive faculty, before the food come into the stomach, but such as are subject to vomit up their meat, let them take such medicines as stay vomiting presently after meat, at the conclusion of their meals, that so they may close up the mouth of the stomach; and that is the reason why usually men eat a bit of cheese after meat, because by its sourness and binding it closes the mouth of the stomach, thereby staying belching and vomiting.

10. In taking purges be very careful, and that you may be so, observe these rules.