“Many writers have told me, he goes on to observe, but especially a Franciscan Father of the Holy Land and two Franciscan Sisters from a hospital at Vialas (Lazére) par Génalhac, that—
“1. They use elm bark for cutaneous eruptions, herpes, and lepra. Four ounces of the bark boiled in decoction in two quarts of water down to one quart. That half a pint given twice a day has made inveterate eruptions of lepra, both dry and humid, to disappear.
“2. The rose burdock—lappa rosea—they give in cases of lepra icthyosis, and it has succeeded where other remedies had failed.
“3. They have used also the root of the mulberry-tree. Half a dram of the powder to a dose.
“4. Lapathum bononicense, or fiddle-dock, and also the dwarf trefoil—trefolium pusillum.
“The following is the list of simples which I obtained from the Lazar-house still existing in Provence, les Alpes Maritimes, and from that in Cyprus, and especially Nicosia, as also from the well-known Leper hospital in Provence:
“Food, baths, and oleaginous applications stand first. Then some preparation of the following ordinary simples, which were most known among our own common people, and which are still used in various parts of England by simple folk for skin diseases and sores. You will see how they entered into the monastic pharmacopœia of the middle ages, how they were at their doors, and especially cultivated in monastery gardens.
“1. Plantain—plantago major. Qualities: alterative, diuretic, antiseptic. For scrofulous and cutaneous affections. It has also the property of destroying living microscopical matter in or on the human body. The Negro Casta, who discovered this herb, afterwards, as a remedy against the deadly bite of the rattlesnake, received a considerable reward from the Assembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of Japan. Plantain stands in the forefront of all the cartels des hospitalières.
“2. Yellow dock—rumex. Alterative, tonic, astringent, detergent, and anti-scorbutic. Employed in scrofula, Leprosy, cutaneous diseases, and purigo, and that with much effect.
“3. Sorrel—rumex ascetocella. Employed locally to cancers, tumours, and the open wounds of the Leper.