Lupulus. Hops. Opening, cleansing, provoke urine, the young sprouts open stoppings of the liver and spleen, cleanse the blood, clear the skin, help scabs and itch, help agues, purge choler: they are usually boiled and taken as they eat asparagus, but if you would keep them, for they are excellent for these diseases, you may make them into a conserve, or into a syrup.
Lychnitis Coronaria: or as others write it, Lychnis. Rose Campion. I know no great physical virtue it hath.
Macis. See the barks.
Magistrantia, &c. Masterwort. Hot and dry in the third degree: it is good against poison, pestilence, corrupt and unwholesome air, helps windiness in the stomach, causeth an appetite to one’s victuals, very profitable in falls and bruises, congealed and clotted blood, the bitings of mad-dogs; the leaves chewed in the mouth, cleanse the brain of superfluous humours, thereby preventing lethargies, and apoplexes.
Malva. Mallows. The best of Authors account wild Mallows to be best, and hold them to be cold and moist in the first degree, they are profitable in the bitings of venomous beasts, the stinging of bees and wasps, &c. Inwardly they resist poison, provoke to stool; outwardly they assuage hard swellings of the privities or other places; in clysters they help roughness and fretting of the entrails, bladder, or fundament; and so they do being boiled in water, and the decoction drank, as I have proved in the bloody flux.
Majorana. See Amaracus.
Mandragora. Mandrakes. Fit for no vulgar use, but only to be used in cooling ointments.
Marrubium, album, nigrum, fœtidum.
Marrubium album, is common Horehound. Hot in the second degree, and dry in the third, opens the liver and spleen, cleanses the breast and lungs, helps old coughs, pains in the sides, ptisicks, or ulceration of the lungs, it provokes the menses, eases hard labour in child-bearing, brings away the placenta. See the syrups.
Marrubium, nigrum, et fœtidum. Black and stinking Horehound, I take to be all one. Hot and dry in the third degree; cures the bitings of mad dogs, wastes and consumes hard knots in the fundament and matrix, cleanses filthy ulcers.