The Description.

            1. The male Mullein or Hag-Taper hath broad leaves, very soft, whitish and downy; in the midst of which riseth up a stalk, straight, single, and the same also whitish all over, with a hoary down, and covered with the like leaves, but lesser and lesser even to the top: among which taperwise are set a multitude of yellow flowers, consisting of five leaves apiece: in the places whereof come up little round vessels, in which is contained very small seed. The root is long, a finger thick, black without and full of strings.

            2. The female Mullein hath likewise many white woolly leaves, set upon an hoary cottony upright stalk, of the height of four or five cubits: the top of the stalks resembleth a torch decked with infinite white flowers, which is the special mark to know it from the male kind, being like in every other respect.

The Place.

            These plants do grow of themselves near the borders of pastures, and ploughed fields, or causeways, and dry sandy ditch banks, and in other untilled places. They grow in great plenty near unto a limekiln upon the end of Blackheath next to London, as also about the Queen's house at Eltham near unto Dartford in Kent: in the highways about Highgate near London, and in most countries of England that are of a sandy soil.

The Time.

            They are found with their flower from July to September, and bring forth their seed the second year after the seed is sown.

The Names.

            Mullein is called in shops, Tapsus barbatus: of divers, Candela regia, Candelaria, and Lanaria: Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen, do call it Verbascum: in Italian, Verbasco, and Tasso Barbasso: in Spanish, Gordolobo: in High Dutch, Mullkraut: in French, Bouillon: in English, Mullein or rather Woollen, Hag-Taper, Torches, Lung-Wort, and Bullock's Lung-Wort; and of some Hare's-Beard.

The Temperature.

            Mullein is of temperature dry: the leaves have also a digesting and cleansing quality, as Galen affirmeth.

The Virtues.

            A. The leaves of Mullein being boiled in water, and laid upon hard swellings and inflammations of the eyes, cureth and ceaseth the pain.

            B. The root boiled in red wine and drunk, stoppeth the lask and bloody flux.

            C. The same boiled in water and drunk, is good for them that are broken and hurt inwardly, and prevaileth much against the old cough.

            D. A little fine treacle spread upon a leaf of Mullein and laid to the piles or haemorrhoids, cureth the same: an ointment also made with the leaves thereof and old hog's grease worketh the same effect.

            E. The leaves worn under the feet day and night, in manner of a shoe sole or sock, bringeth down in young maidens their desired sickness, being kept under their feet with some socks or other thing for falling away.

            F. The country people, especially the husbandmen in Kent, do give their cattle the leaves to drink against the cough of the lungs, being an excellent approved medicine for the same, whereupon they do call it Bullock's Lung-wort.

            G. Frankincense and Mastic burned in a chafing dish of coals, and set within a close stool, and the fume thereof taken underneath, doth perfectly cure the piles, haemorrhoids, and all diseases happening in those lower parts, if also there be at every such fuming (which must be twice every day) a leaf of the herb bound to the place, and there kept until the next dressing.

            H. There be some who think that this herb being but carried about one, doth help the falling sickness, especially the leaves of that plant which hath not as yet borne flowers, and that is gathered when the sun is in Virgo, and the moon in Aries; which thing notwithstanding is vain and superstitious.

            I. The later physicians commend the yellow flowers, being steeped in oil and set in warm dung until they be wasted into the oil and consumed away, to be a remedy against the piles.

            K. The report goeth, saith Pliny, that figs do not putrefy at all that are wrapped in the leaves of Mullein: which thing Dioscorides also maketh mention of.