Little Mouse-Ear (Scorpion Grass)

The English Physician, by Nicholas Culpeper

Culpeper’s Complete Herbal and English Physician, published in 1814




Description. This resembles the other in most respects but size, this being smaller, and in its not being hairy like the former. The leaves are some shades darker green, and have a more crip appearance. In every other regard, it is only a smaller species, and possesses the same virtues, and where one cannot be obtained, the other may supply the place.

Government and virtues. It is under Mercury. Mouse-ear is of a bitterish styptic taste, and is accounted to be drying and binding, and a good vulnerary herb, and helpful for all sorts of fluxes: a decoction of it, used as a gargarism, is commended for ulcers in the mouth. Dr. Hulse made use of the juice of Mouse ear, as a remedy against the herpes miliares, or shingles.

In the old dispensatories, there was a syrup that took its name from this plant, which is now out of use, and therefore left out in the new.