Greetings Lords and Ladies,
"You may see plainly, without a pair of spectacles ,the virtues of plants"
-- Nicholas Culpeper, 1600'sNicholas Culpeper's translation of the College of Physicians herbal guide into language common folk could understand infuriated many of his peers. He and others opposed the growing power of the physicians . At the same time, the apothecary shops were becoming too expensive for most of the ordinary populace. But, by translating the known texts from Latin into English, he and a few other renegade herbalists and natural healers enabled common man to treat themselves.
Thus began a new era in herbalism. Common man now had printed texts to follow instead of the traditional apprentice to master or Grandmother to daughter to granddaughter reliance of yesteryear. A new push for understanding began. Today, 80% of the world's populace rely on herbal medicine for their health care.
An excerpt from "The English Physician"
"Melancoly Thistle:
Their vertues are but a few, but those not to be despised, for the Decoction of the Thistles in Wine being drunk, expels superfluous Melancholly out of the Body, and makes a man as merry as a cricket. Superfluous Melancholly causes care,fear, sadness, despair,envy and many more evils besides. but Religion teacheth to wait upon God's providence and cast our care upon Him, who careth for us; what a fine thing if men and women could live so? and yet seven yeers care and fear makes a man never the wiser nor a farthing the richer. Dioscorides saith, the root born about one doth the like, and removes all diseases of melancholly. Modern writers laugh at him, let him laugh that wins. my opinion is, that tis the best remedy against all Melancholly diseases that grow, they that please may use it. Tis under Capricorn, and therefore under both Saturn and Mars. One rides with Melancholly by sympathy, the other by Antipathy."