CHAP. 76.—SEVENTEEN REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE VIOLET.
There are both wild and cultivated violets.2303 The purple violet is of a cooling nature: for inflammations they are applied to the stomach in the burning heats, and for pains in the head they are applied to the forehead. Violets, in particular, are used for defluxions of the eyes, prolapsus of the fundament and uterus, and suppurations. Worn in chaplets upon the head, or even smelt at, they dispel the fumes of wine and head-ache; and, taken in water, they are a cure for quinsy. The purple violet, taken in water, is a remedy for epilepsy, in children more particularly: violet seed is good for the stings of scorpions.
On the other hand, the flower of the white violet opens suppurations, and the plant itself disperses them. Both the white and the yellow violet check the menstrual discharge, and act as diuretics. When fresh gathered, they have less virtue, and hence it is that they are mostly used dry, after being kept a year. The yellow violet, taken in doses of half a cyathus to three cyathi of water, promotes the catamenia; and the roots of it, applied with vinegar, assuage affections of the spleen, as also the gout. Mixed with myrrh and saffron, they are good for inflammation of the eyes. The leaves, applied with honey, cleanse ulcerous sores of the head, and, combined with cerate,2304 they are good for chaps of the fundament and other moist parts of the body. Employed with vinegar, they effect the cure of abscesses.