Gerard also admonishes the ‘unlearned physitians and diverse and over-rash Apothecaries and
other foolish women’ who treat people with such mixtures regardless of their condition, for
example, those with ‘Catuche or Catalepsis with a fever; to whom they can give nothing worse,
seeing those things do very much hurt and often times bring death it selfe’.
L. stoechas
after Gerard
He describes French lavender or sticados also known as stickedoue and sticadoue, which has
spiky heads out of which the flowers grow, Gerard calls this ‘Stoechas sive spica hortulana’.
Jagged sticados or lavender with the divided leaf he calls ‘Stoechas multisida’.
Toothed sticados,
with nicked or toothed leaves like a saw for which he gives ‘Stoechas folio serrato’, and naked
stoechas have long naked stems on which the spike of flowers grow, this he calls ‘Stoechas sum-
mis cauliculus nudis’. He gives clear descriptions of each variety and again these are illustrated,
but his Latin names have no real botanical significance.
He continues, ‘These herbs do grow wilde in Spaine, in Languedocke in France, and in the
islands called Stoechas over against Manilla, we have them in our gardens and keep them with
great diligence from the injurie of the cold’, in other words considered very tender. Gerard cites
Dioscorides and Galen and gives the names in Latin (stoechas), High Dutch (stichas kraut),
Spanish (thomani and cantuesso) and in English (French lavender, steckado, stickadoue,
cassidonie, and by some simple people cast me down).
For medicinal use he cites Dioscorides as teaching that a decoction
of French lavender helps
diseases of the chest, and is with good success mixed with counter poisons. The later physicians
are not named but cited as writing that the flowers are ‘most effectual against paines in the head,
and all diseases proceeding from cold causes, and therefore they be mixed in all compositions
which are made against head-ache of long continuance, the Apoplexie, the Falling Sickness, and
such like diseases’.
Lastly, Gerard states that the ‘decoction of the husks and floures drunk, openeth the stoppings
of the liver,
the lungs, the milt (melts), the mother (womb), the bladder and in one word all
other inward parts, cleansing and driving forth all evill and corrupt humours, and provoking
urine’.
A summary of uses suggested by Gerard
L. vera
was used to treat catalepsie (?), megrims (migraines), epilepsy, fainting and panting and
passions of the heart (the latter may be panic attacks or palpitations and heart problems). He also
includes giddiness, and palsy (Parkinson’s etc.), and lastly a conserve of lavender as being good
for all these diseases.
L. stoechas
he recommends as good for diseases of the chest (lungs), in counter poisons (theriac
and hiera picra),
pains in the head, diseases of cold cause and in compositions (compounds) for
headaches of long history. Also for apoplexy, epilepsy and similar diseases and lastly a decoction
to open all internal organs and provoke urine.
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