Observations placeholder

Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica – translated by Priscilla Throop from the Latin

Wheat (triticum) is hot and full of profit. Nothing is lacking in it. When proper flour is made from it, and bread made from that flour, it is good for both the healthy and the sick. It furnishes a person with proper flesh and correct blood. But, if anyone sifts out the bran from the flour (which is semolina), and then makes bread from that flour, the bread is weaker and more feeble than if it had been made from the proper flour.

Without its bran, the flour loses its strength somewhat, and produces more mucus in a person than that made from the whole wheat flour.

Whosoever cooks wheat without the entire grain, or wheat not ground in the mill, it is as if he eats another food, for this wheat furnishes neither correct blood nor healthy flesh, but more mucus.

It is scarcely digested.

It is not at all good for a sick person, even if a healthy person is able to survive on this food.

Nevertheless, if someone has an empty brain-and because of this is vexed by insanity and is delerious-take the whole grains of wheat and cook them in water. Remove these cooked grains from the water, and place them around his whole head, tying a cloth over them. His brain will be reinvigorated by their vital fluid, and he may recover his health and strength.

Do this until he returns to his right mind.

If someone is ailing in his back or loins, cook grains of wheat in water, and place them, warm, over the place where he is ailing. The heat of the wheat will chase away the powers of that disease.

[If a dog bites a person, a paste of this flour, prepared with the white of an egg, should be placed over the bite for three days and three nights, so it may draw out the poison: because of its breath, the bite of a dog is more poisonous than that of other animals. Afterward, that paste should be removed, and a compound of yarrow and egg white should be placed on the same wound for two or three days. When that is removed, it should be treated with unguents, as any other wound.]