The Description.
1 The Garden Colewort hath many great broad leaves of a deepe blacke greene colour, mixed with ribs and lines of reddish and white colours: the stalke groweth out of the middest from among the leaves, branched with sundry armes bearing at the top little yellow floures: and after they be past, there do succeed long cods full of round seed like those of the Turnep, but smaller, with a wooddy root having many strings or threds fastned thereto.
2 There is also found a certaine kinde hereof with the leaves wrapped together into a round head or globe, whose head is white of colour, especially toward Winter when it is ripe. The root is hard, and the stalks of a wooddy substance. Dagger This is the great ordinary Cabbage knowne every where, and as commonly eaten all over this kingdome. Dagger
The Place.
The greatest sort of Colewoorts grow in gardens, and do love a soile which is fat: they doe best prosper being removed, and every of them grow in our English gardens, except the wilde, which growes in fields and new digged ditch banks.
The Vertues.
Dioscorides teacheth, that the Colewoort beeing eaten is good for them that have dim eies.
It is reported, that the raw Colewort beeing eaten before meate, doth preserve a man from drunkennesse: the reason is yeelded, for that there is a naturall enmitie betweene it and the vine, which is such, as if it grow neere unto it, forthwith the vine perisheth and withereth away: yea, if wine be poured unto it while it is in boiling, it will not be any more boiled, and the colour thereof quite altered, as Cassius and Dionysius Uticensis do write in their bookes of tillage: yet doth not Athenaeus ascribe that vertue of driving away drunkennesse to the leaves, but to the seeds of Colewort.
Moreover, the leaves of Coleworts are good against all inflammations, and hot swellings; beeing stamped with barley meale, and laied upon them with salt: and also to breake carbuncles.
The juyce of Coleworts, as Dioscorides writeth, beeing taken with Floure-de-lys and nitre, doth make the body soluble: and being drunke with wine, it is a remedy against the bitings of venomous beasts.
The same being applied with the pouder of Fennugreeke, taketh away the paine of the gout.
Being conveied into the nosthrils, it purgeth the head.
Pliny writeth, that the juice mixed with wine, and dropped into the eares, is a remedy against deafenesse.
The seed, as Galen saith, taketh away freckles of the face, sunburning, and what thing soever that need to be gently scoured or clensed away.
They say that the broth wherein the herbe hath bin sodden is marvellous good for the sinewes and joints, and likewise for cankers in the eies, called in Greeke Carcinomata, which cannot be healed by any other meanes, if they be washed therewith.