The garden of health: containing the sundry rare and hidden vertues and properties of all kindes of simples and plants ... Gathered by the long experience and industry of William Langham...
London, Printed by T. Harper, 1633. The 2nd ed. cor. and amended.
Call no: RS81.L35 1633
Although not devoted solely to medicinal plants, William Langham's popular Garden of Health contains lengthy but engaging accounts of the "hidden virtues" of hundreds of plants arranged alphabetically from acacia to wormwood. A "practitioner in physicke," he had particular praise for those plants that "can be gotten without any cost or labour, the most of them being such as grow in most places and are common among us."
Originally published in 1597, Langham's work enjoyed a second edition in 1633, selling well despite the absence of illustrations.
Black hellebore, "the root steeped in wine, and made into powder, and drunke, helpeth them that be mad, melancholy, and witlesse, the falling sicknesse, swimming in the head, giddinesse, gout, dropsie, fevers quarten, leapry, cramps, torments of the intralls..."
Entry for damsons, "the most wholesome of all Plums, which eaten before meat coole the stomacke and loosen the belly"