Note 22 — Chapter I · THE ANGLO-SAXON HERBALS

The directions for the vapour bath are given in such a brief and yet forceful way that I cannot imagine anyone reading it without feeling at the end as though he had run breathlessly to collect the herbs, and then prepared the bath and finally made the ley of alder ashes to wash the unfortunate patient’s head. Like all these cheerful Saxon prescriptions, this one ends with the comforting assurance “it will soon be well with him,” and one wonders whether in this, as in many other cases, the patient got well in order to avoid his friends’ ministrations. The prescription for a vapour bath made with herbs runs thus:—

“Take bramble rind and elm rind, ash rind, sloethorn, rind of apple tree and ivy, all these from the nether part of the trees, and cucumber, smear wort, everfern, helenium, enchanters nightshade, betony, marrubium, radish, agrimony. Scrape the worts into a kettle and boil strongly. When it hath strongly boiled remove it off the fire and seat the man over it and wrap the man up that the vapour may get up nowhere, except only that the man may breathe; beathe him with these fomentations as long as he can bear it. Then have another bath ready for him, take an emmet bed all at once, a bed of those male emmets which at whiles fly, they are red ones, boil them in water, beathe him with it immoderately hot. Then make him a salve. Take worts of each kind of those above mentioned, boil them in butter, smear the sore limbs, they will soon quicken. Make him a ley of alder ashes, wash his head with this cold, it will soon be well with him, and let the man get bled every month when the moon is five and fifteen and twenty nights old.”