Fearfulness without a cause, fearful and foolish imaginations, the skin rough and swarthy, leanness, want of sleep, frightful dreams, sourness in the throat, the pulse very weak, solitariness, thin clear urine, often sighing, &c.
Signs of flegm abounding.
Sleepiness, dulness, slowness, heaviness, cowardliness, forgetfulness, much spitting, much superfluities at the nose, little appetite to meat and as bad digestion, the skin whiter, colder and smoother than it was want to be; the pulse slow and deep: the urine thick and low coloured: dreams of rain, floods, and water, &c.
These things thus premised, I come to the matter.
The first the College presents you with, is
Spiritus et Aqua Absinthis minus Composita.
Or, Spirit and water of Wormwood, the lesser composition.
College.] Take of the leaves of dryed Wormwood two pounds, Annis seeds, half a pound: steep them in six gallons of small wine twenty four hours, then distil them in an Alembick, adding to every pound of the distilled water two ounces of the best Sugar.
Let the two first pound you draw out be called Spirit of Wormwood, those which follow, Wormwood water the lesser composition.
Culpeper.] I like this distinction of the College very well, because what is first stilled out, is far stronger than the rest, and therefore very fitting to be kept by itself: you may take which you please, according as the temperature of your body, either to heat or cold, and the season of year requires.