Botanologia the Brittish physician, or, the nature and vertues of English plants, exactly describing such plants as grow naturally in our land, with their several names Greek, Latine, or English, natures, places where they grow ... : by means whereof people may gather their own physick under every hedge ... : with two exact tables, the one of the English and Latine names of the plants, the other of the diseases and names of each plant appropriated to the diseases, with their cures / by Robert Turner.

Spikenard. Nardus Indica.

IT is naturally an Indian Plant, called Nardus Indica, therefore I shall proceed to declare its Vertues, not troubling you at all with its description.

Nature and Vertues.] Spikenard is of a heating drying faculty, as saith Dioscorides; it is good to provoke urine, and easeth pains of the stone in the Reins and Kidneys, being drunk in cold water; it helps loathing, swelling or knawing in the stomach, the yellow Jaundies, and such as are liver∣grown: It is a good Ingredient in Mithridate and other An∣tidotes against poison; to women with childe it is sorbidden, but a decoction thereof may be a good bathe for others to sit over that are troubled with Inflammations of the Mother: The Oyl of Spikenard is good to warm cold places, and to di∣gest crude and raw humours: It worketh powerfully on all cold griess of the Head and Brain, Stomach, Liver, Spleen, Reins, Bladder, and of the Mother: It purgeth the brain of Rheum

being snuffed up into the nostrils; being infused certain dayes in wine, and then distilled in a hot bathe, the Water is good in∣wardly and outwardly to be used for any coldness of the mem∣bers: It comforts the brain, and helps cold pains of the head, and the shaking Palsie: Two or three spoonfuls thereof being taken helps passions of the heart, swoonings, and the Chollick; being drunk with wine it is good against venomous bitings; and being made into Trochis with wine, it may be reserved for an Eye-medicine, which being aptly applyed represseth obnoxi∣ous humours thereof.