Juniper Bush - The English Physitian

JUNIPER BUSH

For to give a description of a bush so commonly known is needless.

Place.  They grow plentifully in divers woods in Kent, Warriey Common, near Brentwood, in Essex, upon Finchley Common without Highgite ; hard by the New-found Wells, near Dulwich, upon a common between Mitcharn and Croydon, in the Highgate, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and many other places.

Time.  The berries are not ripe the first year, but continue green two summers and one winter before they are ripe; at which time they are all of a black colour, and therefore you shall always find upon the bush green berries; the berries are ripe about the fall of the leaf.

Government and Virtues.  This admirable Solar shrub is scarce to be paralleled for its virtues. The berries are hot in the third degree, and dry but in the first, being a most admirable counter-poison, and as great resister of the pestilence, as any that grows; they are excellent good against the bitings of venomous beasts; they provoke urine exceedingly, and therefore are very available to dysuries anti stranguries It is so powerful a remedy against the dropsy, that the very lee made of the ashes of the herb being drank, cures the disease. It provokes the terms, helps the fits of the mother, strengthens the stomach exceedingly, and expels the wind. Indeed there is scarce a better remedy for wind in any part of the body, or the colic, than the chymical oil drawn from the berries such country people as know not how to draw the chymical oil, may content themselves by eating ten or a dozen of the ripe berries every morning fasting. They are admirable good for a cough, shortness of breath and consumption, pains in the belly, ruptures, cramps, and convulsions. They give safe and speedy delivery to women with child, they strengthen the brain exceedingly, help the memory, and fortify the sight by strengthening the optic nerves; are excellent good in all sorts of agues help the gout and sciatica, and strengthen all the limbs of the body. The ashes of the wood are a speedy remedy to such as have the scurvy, to rub their gums with. The berries stay all fluxes, help the hemmorrhoids or piles, and kill worms in children. A lee made of the ashes of the wood, and the body bathed with it, cures the itch, scabs, and leprosy. The berries break the stone, procure appetite when it is lost, and are excellent good for all palsies, and failing, sickness.

N.B. - Housenote: Juniperus communis,