Fig. 672. Soapwort

The Description.

            The stalks of Soapwort are slippery, slender, round, jointed, a cubit high or higher: the leaves are broad, set with veins very like broad-Leaved Plantain, but yet lesser, standing out of every joint by couples for the most part, and especially those that are the nearest the roots bowing backwards. The flowers in the top of the stalks and about the uppermost joints are many, well smelling, sometimes of a beautiful red colour like a Rose; otherwhile of a light purple or white, which grow out of long cups consisting of five leaves, in the middle of which are certain little threads. The roots are thick, long, creeping aslope, having certain strings hanging out of them like to the roots of Black Hellebore: and if they have once taken good and sure rooting in any ground it is impossible to destroy them.

            There is kept in some of our gardens a variety of this, which differs from it in that the flowers are double and somewhat larger: in other respects it is altogether like the precedent.

The Place.

            It is planted in gardens for the flowers' sake, to the decking up of houses, for the which purpose it chiefly serveth. It groweth wild of itself near to rivers and running brooks in sunny places.

The Time.

            It flowereth in June and July.

The Names.

            It is commonly called Saponaria, of the great scouring quality that the leaves have: for they yield out of themselves a certain juice when they are bruised, which scoureth almost as well as soap: although Ruellius describe a certain other Soapwort. Of some it is called Alisma, or Damasonium: of others, Saponaria gentiana, whereof doubtless it is a kind: in English it is called Soapwort, and of some Bruisewort.

The Temperature and Virtues.

            It is hot and dry, and not a little scouring withal.

            A. Although our author and such as before him have written of plants were ignorant of the faculty of this herb, yet hath the industry of some later men found out the virtue thereof: and Septalius reports that it was one Zapata a Spanish empiric. Since whose time it hath been written of by Rudius, lib. 5. de Morbis occultus & venenatus cap. 18. And by Cæsar Claudinus, de Ingressu ad infirmos, pag. 411  pag. 417. But principally by Ludovicus Septalius, Animadvers. Med. lib. 7. num. 214, where treating of decoctions in use against the French poxes, he mentions the singular effect of this herb against that filthy disease. His words are these: I must not in this place omit the use of another alexipharmical decoction, being very effectual and useful for the poorer sort; namely that which is made of Soapwort, an herb common and known to all. Moreover, I have sometimes used it with happy success in the most contumacious disease: but it is of somewhat an ungrateful taste, and therefore it must be reserved for the poorer sort. The decoction is thus made:

            Rx. Saponariæ virid. M. ii. infundantur per noctem in lib. viii aquæ mox excoquantur ad cocturum Saponariæ: deinde libra una cum dimidia aquæ cum herbaiam cocta excoletur cum expresione, quæ reservetur pro potione matutina ad sudores proliciendos sumendo unciae vii aut viii quod vero superest dulcoretur cum passuris aut saccaro pro potu cum cibis; æstate & biliosis naturis addi poterit aut Sonchi, aut Cymbalariæ M. i. Valet & pro muleribus ad menstrua alba absumenda cum M. ss. Cymbalariæ, & addito tantaundem Philipendulæ.

["Rx. Take two handfuls of green Soapwort, steep overnight in eight pints of water. Boil until one pint has boiled away, then pour it off, pressing out all the juice from the soapwort leaves. Take every morning enough to cause sweating – about seven or eight ounces – sweetened with sugar or raisins and drunk with food. In summer and for bilious natures, you can add a handful of Sow-Thistle or Wall Pennywort. For the drying up of women's white menstruae, add half a handful of Wall Pennywort and the same amount of Meadowsweet."]

            Thus much Septalius, who saith that he had used it saepe ac saepius, often and often again.

            B. Some have commended it to be very good to be applied to green wounds, to hinder inflammation, and speedily to heal them.