STONE-CROP, PRICK-MADAM, OR SMALL-HOUSELEEK.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Culpeper, Nicholas
Descript.] It grows with divers trailing branches upon the ground, set with many thick, flat, roundish, whitish green leaves, pointed at the ends. The flowers stand many of them together, somewhat loosely. The roots are small, and run creeping under ground.
Place.] It grows upon the stone walls and mud walls, upon the tiles of houses and pent-houses, and amongst rubbish, and in other gravelly places.
Time.] It flowers in June and July, and the leaves are green all the Winter.
Government and virtues.] It is under the dominion of the Moon, cold in quality, and something binding, and therefore very good to stay defluctions, especially such as fall upon the eyes. It stops bleeding, both inward and outward, helps cankers, and all fretting sores and ulcers; it abates the heat of choler, thereby preventing diseases arising from choleric humours. It expels poison much, resists pestilential fevers, being exceeding good also for tertian agues: You may drink the decoction of it, if you please, for all the foregoing infirmities. It is so harmless an herb, you can scarce use it amiss: Being bruised and applied to the place, it helps the king’s evil, and any other knots or kernels in the flesh; as also the piles.