Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)

subsection 30

30. Ancula alba, scabiosa: it is hot and dry in the second degree; pound this herb and cook it in pig lard or in oil and it will help with the scabby head; if the juice of this herb be rubbed on a rash, it will help with it. Item, if four dragmas of the juice of this herb be drunk, it will help with the skin disease called alopecia. Item, boil this herb and garlic mustard in wine, put it hot on the anus and it will cure the illness called haemorrhoids; if it be put as a poultice on the same place, it will help with external piles of the anus; the same poultice will also help against boils of the anus and tenesmus; and against cold rheum in old people if it be boiled in wine and given to drink. Make a poultice of this herb with white of egg through it, and it will help with the boils known as anthrax. Platearius says to put the juice of this herb in the ear against


p.473

deafness, and it will help with the deafness. Macer says to make a poultice of this herb and of unsalted butter, and it will help with pain in the sides and in the kidneys; if the same herb be boiled in honey it will help with the dry cough. If a spoonful of the juice of this herb be given to drink, it will help with the women's evil, and with every poison that a person takes; pound it with pig lard through it and it will bring boils to a head, as Averroes says.