The Description.
1 Psyllium, or the common Fleawort, hath many round and tender branches, set full of long and narrow leaves somewhat hairy. The tops of the stalks are garnished with sundrie round chaffie knops beset with small yellow floures: which beeing ripe containe many little shining seeds, in proportion, colour, and bignesse like unto fleas.
2 The second kinde of Psyllium Fleawort hath long and tough branches, of a woody substance like the precedent, but longer and harder, with leaves resembling the former, but much longer and narrower. The chaffie tuft which containeth the seed is like the other, but more like the eare of Phalaris, which is the eare of Alpisti, the Canary seed which is meat for birds that come from the Islands of Canarie. The root hereof lasteth all the winter, and likewise keepes his greene leaves; whereof it tooke this addition of Sempervirens.
The Place.
These plants are not growing in our fields of England, as they do in France and Spaine, yet I have them growing in my garden.
The Time.
They floure in June and July.
The Names.
Fleawort is called in English, Fleawort; not because it killeth fleas, but because the seeds are like fleas.
The Vertues.
The seed of Fleawort boiled in water or infused, and the decoction or infusion drunke, cooleth the heate of the inward parts, and quencheth drowth and thirst.
The seed stamped, and boiled in water to the form of a plaister, and applied, takes away all swellings of the joints, especially if you boile the same with vineger and oile of roses, and apply it as aforesaid.
Some hold, That the herb strewed in the chamber where any fleas be, will drive them away; for which cause it tooke the name Fleawort: but I thinke it is rather because the seed doth resemble a flea so much, that it is hard to discern the one from the other.
The Danger.
Too much Fleawort seed taken inwardly is hurtfull to mans nature: so that I wish you not to follow the minde of Galen and Dioscorides in this point, being a medicine rather bringing a malady, than taking away the griefe: remembring the old proverb, A man may buy gold too deare, and the hony is too deare that is lickt from thorns.