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Subsection 3 Alteratives Herbs and Other Plant Remedies

SUBSECTION 3 Alteratives herbs and other plant remedies

Among the 800 simples enumerated by Galeottus in book 3 of On Various Kinds of Learning, chapter 3, and described by many accomplished herbalists, I find only the following few specifically suited to this humour. Some are alteratives, “which by a hidden power,” says Renodaeus, “and a special quality ward off future diseases, perfectly cure those already present, and remedy many such incurable conditions.”

This is observed in other plants, stones, minerals and animals as well as in herbs, and in other illnesses as well as this one. How many things are reported of a human skull? What different powers are attributed to the horny growths on a horse’s leg, to a wolf’s liver and so forth? Or to various animal excrements, all said to be good against particular diseases?

What extraordinary powers are ascribed to plants! “Satyrion and rocket cause an erection; vines and water lilies extinguish semen.” Some herbs arouse sexual desire; others, such as chaste tree and water lily, entirely suppress semen. Poppy causes sleep; cabbage resists drunkenness, and so on.

More remarkable still is that particular plants should have a special power over particular parts of the body: for the head, aniseed, coltsfoot, betony, calamint, eyebright, lavender, bay, roses, rue, sage, marjoram, peony and so on. For the lungs, calamint, liquorice, elecampane, hyssop, horehound, water germander and so on. For the heart, borage, bugloss, saffron, balm, basil, rosemary, violet, roses and so on.

For the stomach, wormwood, mints, betony, balm, centaury, sorrel and purslane. For the liver, darthspine or chamaepitys, germander, agrimony, fennel, endive, chicory, liverwort and barberries. For the spleen, maidenhair, finger fern, dodder of thyme, hops, ash bark and betony. For the kidneys, gromwell, parsley, saxifrage, plantain and mallow. For the womb, mugwort, pennyroyal, feverfew, savin and so on. For the joints, chamomile, St John’s wort, organ, rue, cowslips, lesser centaury and so on.

The same applies to particular diseases. For melancholy you will find a catalogue of suitable herbs, for every affected part. See further in Wecker, Renodaeus, Heurnius, book 2, chapter 19, and others. I will discuss them briefly, beginning with alteratives, which Galen, in his third book On the Affected Parts, prefers to evacuating remedies; Alexander of Tralles boasts that he has cured more melancholy patients by moistening them than by purging them.

In this catalogue, borage and bugloss may claim first place, whether as the plant itself, juice, roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, decoctions, distilled waters, extracts, oils and so on, for these herbs can be prepared in many ways. Bugloss is hot and moist, and is therefore rightly counted among the herbs that expel melancholy and cheer the heart: Galen, book 6, chapter 80, On Simple Medicines; Dioscorides, book 4, chapter 123. Pliny praises this plant highly. It can be used in various ways: in broth, wine, preserves, syrups and so on.

It is an excellent cordial and is very frequently prescribed for this disorder. Indeed, the herb is so powerful that Diodorus, Library, book 7; Pliny, book 25, chapter 2, and book 21, chapter 22; Plutarch, Table Talk, book 1, chapter 1; Dioscorides, book 5, chapter 40; and Caelius, book 19, chapter 3, suppose it to have been Homer’s famous nepenthe. Polydamna, the wife of Thon, then king of Thebes in Egypt, sent this to Helen as a gift. It had so extraordinary a power that, if you took it steeped in wine, you could neither grieve nor shed a tear even if your wife and children, father and mother, brother and sister, and all your dearest friends died before your eyes.

Whoever once has drunk that nepenthe mixed with wine in a bowl Will shed no tear, even if his dearest child, His beloved brother, mother or father Dies before his eyes, pierced by a cruel sword.

Helen’s celebrated bowl, which cheered the heart, contained no other ingredient than this borage, as most of our learned commentators conjecture.

Melissa, or balm, has a remarkable power to alter melancholy, whether steeped in our usual drink, extracted or taken in some other form. Cardano, book 8, greatly admires this herb. According to Heurnius, it heats and dries in the second degree, wonderfully strengthens the heart and purges all melancholic vapours from the spirits: Mattioli, on Dioscorides, book 3, chapter 10. They attribute other powers to it as well: “to aid digestion, cleanse the brain, banish all worried thoughts and anxious imaginings.” Much the same words occur in Avicenna, Pliny, Simeon Seth, Fuchs, L’Obel, Dalechamps and every herbalist. Nothing is better for a melancholy person than to steep this and borage in his usual drink.

In the fifth book of his Medical Letters, Mattioli lists scorzonera “not only against poison, epilepsy and vertigo, but for this disorder: its root, taken by itself, drives away sorrow and brings mirth and lightness of heart.”

Antonius Musa, that renowned physician to Caesar Augustus, praises betony wonderfully in chapter 6 of his book on its virtues: “it guards people’s souls and bodies and makes them secure from fear.” It preserves both body and mind from fears, cares and griefs, and cures epilepsy, this disorder and many other diseases. Galen agrees, in book 7, On Simple Medicines, as does Dioscorides, book 4, chapter 1, and others.

Marigold is highly esteemed against melancholy, and is therefore often used in our everyday broth, being considered good against this and many other diseases.

7496.A “simple” is a single medicinal substance; an “alterative” was intended to change an unhealthy bodily condition without evacuation. “Humour” here is the melancholic humour. Burton reports the powers assigned to remedies by his authorities within historical medicine. “Secret” means hidden or unexplained. The marginal Latin promises prevention; the English body adds cure and the deliberately striking phrase “incurable effects.” The precise Galeottus and Renodaeus passages remain to be collated.

7499.“Corns” means the horny growths on a horse’s leg. Burton’s materia medica includes animal and human substances as well as plants and minerals. The rhetorical questions accumulate reported powers rather than explain how they operate.

7502.The margin glosses satyrium as “priestpintle,” an old plant name whose precise identification is not settled here. The Latin reads vites, “vines,” whereas the ensuing English names agnus castus, the chaste tree; vitex would agree with that name, but the printed wording is retained. “Seed” means semen. The savin note adds a different reproductive effect and is retained at its printed anchor.

7504.The catalogue assigns remedies to organs according to period medicine. “Foalfoot” is coltsfoot: Culpeper’s contemporary English Physitian also gives the paired names. Ennula campana is rendered elecampane. The sequence and repetitions are preserved rather than reorganized by modern botanical classification.

7505.“Succory” is chicory; “rinde” is bark; “grumell” is gromwell, a name also documented by the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. “Fetherfew” is feverfew and “savine” savin. The less certain names darthspine, finger fern and organ are retained rather than assigned unverified species. Camæpitis is normalized to chamaepitys in the modern column. This vocabulary is not a species-level identification of every remedy.

7507.“Diminutives” reduce or evacuate bodily matter; “moistening” and purging are contrasted as modes of humoral treatment. Trallianus is Alexander of Tralles. The t reference to Laurentius has no clearly visible matching body marker in this scan; it is attached to the report about Trallianus to which it is aligned. The precise passage remains to be collated.

7511.“Hot and moist” describes humoral qualities, not the physical temperature or wetness of the preparation. A “cordial” strengthens or cheers the heart; “conserves” are preserved preparations. The unmarked Borage heading and both Latin marginal sayings are preserved as notes. Burton moves between borage and bugloss without resolving their botanical relationship.

7513.Odyssey 4.219–232 describes Helen’s grief-banishing drug, given by Polydamna, wife of Thon. Diodorus 1.97.7 connects this with Egyptian Thebes and its women’s drugs. Neither consulted passage identifies borage or makes Thon king. Burton’s “Diodorus lib. 7” remains as printed; the comparison supplies a different location, not an explanation of his numbering. Other nepenthe authorities remain uncollated.

7514.This Latin verse paraphrases the episode in Odyssey 4. It is freshly translated here as printed, including its compressed syntax: the verb “shed” is supplied with lachrymam, “a tear.” Iacchus, a name associated with Bacchus, stands for wine. The four printed verse lines remain a separate unit from Burton’s preceding English account. The Latin translator has not been securely identified.

7518.“In the second degree” places heat and dryness on the graded scale of humoral qualities. “Spirits” are the subtle bodily agents of life and sensation. “Concoction” means digestion; “carefull” means burdened with cares. The Latin margin speaks specifically of removing obstructions of the brain, where the English says cleansing it. Both formulations are retained. Burton’s claims belong to his source tradition.

7521.The unmarked Scorzonera label stands at the bottom of the preceding page; it anticipates this paragraph and has been moved with an explicit note. “Falling sickness” is epilepsy and “vertiginous” refers to vertigo. The marginal Latin specifies vipers’ bites, whereas Burton’s English has the broader “poison.” The difference is preserved.

7522.The work on betony is transmitted under Antonius Musa’s name, but manuscript catalogues identify its author as Pseudo-Antonius Musa. The British Library’s Harley MS 1585 catalogue records this attribution. Burton’s historical identification is preserved in the body. His English paraphrase extends the shorter Latin assurance about protection and freedom from fear.