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VEronica is twofold, one masculine, the other foeminine, which many call Elatine; the former, Paulus Aegineta calls Betony; it creeps along the earth, with many hirsute and pedall surcles with long leafs, lesser then Betony; somewhat like Teu∣crion, but lanuginous, with flowers orderly digested, of a purpu∣reous colour, with a small rotund black seed contained in cups like boxes, and with a slender root variously divaricated.
The foeminine Veronica, which many call Elatine; some, Rep∣rilis Veronica, hath many, pedal, slender, flexile, lanuginous, and solious surcles; with hoary, pilous leafs, like Nummulary: with small white flowers like Anthirrhinon, with small, round black seed like Pimpernel, much of it growes among segetives in fallow ground and sandy places.
Some make mention of a kind of Veronica, with an erect Caul, which puts forth more rigid furcles, which are renuious, ramous and folious like the former.
Dodonaeus adds another Veronica, growing in Meadowes and moist places, in effigies and magnitude very like the foeminine; but its leafs are lesser, not lanuginous, but smooth and green: its brauches are reptile, flowers caeruleous, its seed contained in lit∣tle boxes small and black; this and the former are seldom or never used in medicine.
Sense indicates, that Veronica is hot and dry; and experience demonstrates it to be astrictive, and a good vulnerary: it cures the Scab, Wounds, Ulcers, and all vices in the skin; it hath a peculiar faculty in curing, or at least asswaging, cancerous Ulcers. Fuchsius writes falsly, that the King of France, correpted with the Leprosie, was cured with the adjument of this herb: for no King of France was ever correpted with such a foede disease, nor yer with Pestilence.