Spear Mint

MINT (Garden or Spear) MENTHA SPICATA M. VIRIDIS)
The juice of Garden Mint taken in vinegar, stays bleeding and stirs up venery, or bodily lust.
Spearmint is one of the most popular herbs grown in gardens. In good ground it will grow two or three feet (60 to 90 m) high. The purplish flowers grow in long spikes.
Where to find it: Commonly cultivated in herb gardens, but is found wild in scattered places. It was originally from the Mediterranean countries.
Flowering time: Midsummer.
Astrology: It is an herb of Venus.
Medicinal virtues: Two or three branches in the juice of four pomegranates stays the hiccough and vomiting. It is good to repress the milk in women's breasts. If the leaves be steeped or boiled in milk before being drunk, it is profitable to the stomach and restrains the milk from curdling.
Use of it often will stay women's courses and the whites. Applied to the forehead or temples, it eases pains in the head. The heads of young children can he washed with it to help against sores and scabs.
The dried powder taken after meat helps digestion and those that are splenetic. Taken in wine, it helps women in childbearing. It is good against gravel and stone in the kidneys and the strangury. The decoction gargled in the mouth amends an ill-favoured breath and cures the sore mouth and gums. Mint is a herb that is useful in all disorders of the stomach, including weakness, loss of appetite, pain and vomiting. It also stops gonorrhoea, fluor albus and immoderate flow of the menses.
A cataplasm of the green leaves applied to the stomach, stays vomiting, and to women's breasts prevents hardness and curdling of milk.
Modern uses: Mainly used for culinary purposes, but is added to medicines because of its pleasant taste. It is anti-flatulent, anti-spasmodic and stimulating, and often used in paediatric medicines. The plant is gathered in late summer just as it begins to flower. It yields an oil similar to Peppermint oil and with similar properties. Two or three drops of oil can be taken on a lump of sugar for flatulence. Adding eight drops of the oil to 1 pt (568 mi) of water makes Aqua menthae, or Mint Water, which can be given to babies with colic. The infusion of 1 oz (28 g) of dried herb to 1 pt (568 ml) of boiling water is also excellent for nausea and wind.