CHAP. 74.—LUPINES: THIRTY-FIVE REMEDIES.
There are wild lupines,
1 also, inferior in every respect to
the cultivated kinds, except in their bitterness. Of all the
alimentary substances, there are none which are less heavy or
more useful
2 than dried lupines. Their bitterness is considerably modified by cooking them on hot ashes, or steeping them
in hot water. Employed frequently as an article of food, they
impart freshness to the colour; the bitter lupine, too, is good for
the sting of the asp. Dried lupines, stripped of the husk and
pounded, are applied in a linen cloth to black ulcers, in which
they make new flesh: boiled in vinegar, they disperse scrofu-
lous sores and imposthumes of the parotid glands. A decoction of them, with rue and pepper, is given in fever even, as
an expellent of intestinal worms,
3 to patients under thirty
years of age. For children, also, they are applied to the sto-
mach as a vermifuge, the patient fasting in the meantime and,
according to another mode of treatment, they are parched and
taken in boiled must or in honey.
Lupines have the effect of stimulating the appetite, and of
dispelling nausea. The meal of them, kneaded up with vinegar, and applied in the bath, removes pimples and prurigo;
employed alone, it dries up ulcerous sores. It cures bruises
also, and, used with polenta, allays inflammations. The wild
lupine is found to be the most efficacious for debility of the
hips and loins. A decoction of them, used as a fomentation, removes freckles and improves the skin; and lupines,
either wild or cultivated, boiled down to the consistency of
honey, are a cure for black eruptions and leprosy. An application of cultivated lupines causes carbuncles to break, and reduces inflamed tumours and scrofulous sores, or else brings them
to a head: boiled in vinegar, they restore the flesh when cicatrized to its proper colour. Thoroughly boiled in rain-water,
the decoction of them furnishes a detersive medicine, of which
fomentations are made for gangrenes, purulent eruptions, and
runing ulcers. This decoction is very good, taken in drink,
for affections of the spleen, and with honey, for retardations of
the catamenia. Beaten up raw, with dried figs, lupines are
applied externally to the spleen. A decoction of the root acts
as a diuretic.
The herb chamæleon,
4 also, is boiled with lupines, and the
water of it strained off, to be used as a potion for cattle.
Lupines boiled in amurca,
5 or a decoction of them mixed with
amurca, heals the itch in beasts. The smoke of lupines kills
6
gnats.