FOLK MEDICINE.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

"Herb Lore". A beautifully illustrated manuscript detailing the uses of herbs and flowers in folk medicine and magic. The featured plants include cowslips, which "taketh away the spots & wrinkles of the skin", and hart's-tongue ferns, which are "good against passions of the heart" and "also to stay hiccoughs". There is also a 17th-century spell "to enable one to see fairies".The remedies are supplemented by quotations from authorities such as the 17th-century naturalist William Turner, John Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum (1640), and Ecclesiastes.

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