Observations placeholder

FIG-TREE

Description. The fig-tree seldom grows to be a tree of any great bigness in our parts, being clothed with large leaves bigger than vine-leaves, full of high veins and divided for the most part into five blunt-pointed segments, yielding a thin milky juice when broken. It bears no visible flowers.

Place. They prosper very well in our English gardens, yet are fitter for medicine than for any other profit that is gotten by the fruit of them.

Government and virtues. The tree is under the dominion of Jupiter. The milk that issues out from the leaves or branches where they are broken off, being dropped upon warts, takes them away. The decoction of the leaves is excellent good to wash sore heads with: and there is scarcely a better remedy for the leprosy than it is.

It clears the face also of morphew, and the body of white scurf, scabs, and running sores. If it be dropped into old fretting ulcers, it cleanses out the moisture, and brings up the flesh; because you cannot have the leaves green all the year, you may make an ointment of them while you can. A decoction of the leaves being drank inwardly, or rather a syrup made of them, dissolves congealed blood caused by bruises or falls, and helps the bloody flux.

The ashes of the wood made into an ointment with hog's grease, helps kibes and chilblains. The juice being put into an hollow tooth, eases pain; as also deafness and pain and noise in the ears, being dropped into them. An ointment made of the juice and hog's grease, is as excellent a remedy for the biting of mad dogs, or other venomous beasts, as most are; a syrup made of the leaves, or green fruit, is excellent for coughs, hoarseness, or shortness of breath, and all diseases of the breast and lungs; it is very good for the dropsy and falling sickness.