Medicinal use of cabbage

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Medicinal Uses of Cabbage

156. On cabbage as an aid to digestion.

Cabbage surpasses all vegetables. Eat it either cooked or raw: if you eat it raw, dress it with vinegar. It aids digestion remarkably and does the bowels good, and the urine will be beneficial for all purposes.

If you want to drink a lot and eat copiously at a party, eat as much cabbage as you want, raw, dressed with vinegar, before dining. Then, when about to dine, eat about 5 leaves. You will feel as if you had eaten nothing, and you can drink as much as you want.

If you want to purge by vomiting, take 4 lb. of the tenderest cabbage, divide into three equal bunches and tie. Then put a pot of water on the fire, and when it begins to boil plunge one bunch into it briefly. It will stop boiling. Then, as it boils, plunge the bunch again while you count five, and take it out. Do the same with the second bunch, and then the third. Then put all together and pound. Remove into a linen bag, and express about 1 pint of juice into an earthenware mug. Add a salt crystal about the size of a bitter vetch seed, and roasted cumin seed enough to give a flavour. Then put the mug outdoors, in good weather, overnight. The person who is to take the medicine should have a hot bath, drink honey water, and go to bed without dinner, then in the mrning drink the juice and walk for four hours, and do any business required. When the urge comes and nausea is felt, recline and vomit. So much bile and phlegm will be thrown up that the patient will wonder where it all came from. Later, after moving the bowels, drink half a pint or a little more. If the motions are too frequent, take two spoonfuls of fine flour, crumble into water and drink a little, and they will stop.

For those who are troubled by colic, cabbage should be steeped in water. When steeped, put it into hot water. Boil until thoroughly soft. Pour off the water. Then add salt and a little cumin; also add fine barley meal and olive oil. The boil, pour into a dish and allow to cool. This is to be included in the patient’s next meal, or, preferably, to be eaten on its own. Unless there is fever, give also harsh red wine mixed with as little water as possible; if there is fever, give water. Do this daily, early in the morning. Do not give too much, or the patient will become sick of it instead of continuing to take it freely. Treat a man, a woman or a child in the same way.

Now as to patients for whom urination is painful or dribbling. Take cabbage, put in boiling water, boil briefly till half cooked. Then pour out some of the water, add plenty of oil and salt and a little cumin. Bring to the boil briefly. Then take the juice, cold, and eat the cabbage itself, digesting it as quickly as possible. Do this each day.

158. Move the bowels as follows. If you want a good motion, take a pot and put in it 6 pints of water and a cooked pig’s trotter. If you have no trotter, substitute lb. ham as lean as possible. When nearly cooked add two young cabbage heads, two heads of beet with the root, a shoot of polypody, a little herb mercury, 2 lb. mussels, 1 capito fish, 1 scorpion, 6 snails and a handful of lentils. Boil all this down till it reduces to 3 pints of liquid. Do not add oil. Take 1 pint of this mixture, warm, adding 1 cyathus Coan Wine. Drink it, rest, then drink another pint as before, then the third. You will purge yourself thoroughly. If you wish in addition to drink Coan Wine mixed with water, you may. Of all these ingredients listed only one, whichever, has the power to move the bowels! The other ingredients are given so as to move thoroughly, and to enjoy it.

Supplement on Cabbage
157. On the Pythagorean Cabbage and its good and health-giving properties.

First you must know the different kinds of cabbage and their nature.

It blends all healthy influences and ever adapts itself with the application of heat, being at once dry and wet, at once sweet and sour and bitter. Cabbage, in its mixed nature, has all of the so-called Seven Good Things.


Garden Cabbage and its Uses
First, then, to explain this nature. The first kind is called levis, delicate. It is large, broad-leaved, long-stemmed, and has a powerful nature and great force.The second is crinkled, called apiaca: good in nature and appearance, it is more powerful in medicine than the first. So is the third, called mild: thin-stemmed, it is tender and the bitterest of all, with a very active thin juice, and you must know first of all that of all the kinds of cabbage none is as effective a medicine as this.

Put it, ground fine, to all wounds and swellings. It will clean up and heal all sores painlessly. It brings boils to a head and makes them burst.

It will clean up and heal septic wounds and cancers, as medicines cannot. Before you apply it, wash with plenty of hot water, then apply ground cabbage twice a day. It will remove all decay. Black cancer gives off a smell and a foul slime; the white is purulent but fistulous and suppurates under the flesh. Grind cabbage for illnesses of this kind. It will cure them, and is the best thing for illnesses of this kind.

In case of dislocation, foment with hot water twice a day and apply ground cabbage: it will soon cure it. Apply twice a day: it will remove the pain. If there is any bruising, it will break it up; apply ground cabbage: it will cure it.

If any sore or cancer develops in the breasts, apply ground cabbage: it will cure it. If the sore cannot bear the bitterness of the cabbage, mix with barley flour and apply the mixture: it will cure all sores of this kind, while other medicines cannot cure them or clean them up. If a boy or girl has a sore of this kind, again, add barley flour.

If you want your cabbage chopped, washed, dried, sprinkled with salt or vinegar, there is nothing healthier. To enjoy it more, sprinkle with honey vinegar. Washed and dried, with chopped rue and coriander and sprinkled with salt you will enjoy it a little better. It does you good, permits no disease to remain in the body, and does the bowels good. If there was any disease present internally, cabbage will cure all, remove all sicknesses from the head and the eyes and cure them. Take it in the morning before eating.

If there is black bile, if the spleen swells, if the heart or liver or lungs or diaphragm are painful, in a word, it will cure whatever organ is painful.

Grate silpium over it: that is good.

When all the veins are blown up with food they cannot breathe through the body, and that gives rise to illness. When from overeating the bowels will not move, if you take (as I advise) an appropriate amount of cabbage, you will develop no illness from overeating.

Now nothing clears illness of the joints as well as raw cabbage, whether you eat it chopped, with rue and coriander chopped in, dry, with grated sirpicium, or as cabbage in honey vinegar sprinkled with salt. If you take this, you will have the use of all your joints. It costs nothing, and even if it did you should try it for the sake of health. Take it in the morning before eating.

One who suffers from insomnia or senility will find the same cure effective. Give this patient, before eating, cabbage fried in fat, hot, and a little salt. The more that ias eaten, the quicker will be the recovery from this illness.

Those who are troubled by colic are to be treated as follows. Soak cabbage thoroughly, then place in a cooking pot and boil thoroughly. When well cooked, pour off the water and add plenty of oil and a little salt, cumin and fine barley meal. Then boil thoroughly. When it has boiled put in a dish. Give this to the patient to eat, without bread if possible; if not, allow bread, with this dish as relish, but nothing else. If there is no fever, give red wine to drink. The cure will be rapid.

Whenever necessary this will cure anyone who is weak: take cabbage as just described.


Cabbage Eaters’ Urine
In addition, store the urine of anyone who habitually eats cabbage; warm it, bathe the patient in it. With this treatment you will soon restore health; it has been tested. If you wash feeble children in this urine they will be weak no longer. Those who cannot see clearly should bathe their eyes in this urine and they will see more. If the head or neck is painful, wash in this urine, heated: they will cease to be painful.

Also, if a woman foments her parts with this urine, they will never irritate. Foment as follows: boil in a basin and place under a commode; the woman is then to sit on the commode, covering the basin with her clothing.


Wild Cabbage and its Uses
Wild cabbage has the greatest strength. It should be heated and ground thoroughly fine.

If you intend to purge someone, the patient should not take dinner on the preceding day. In the morning, before eating, give ground cabbage and 4 cyathi of water. Nothing will purge so well, not even hellebore or scammony, and safely too: you must know that it is healthy for the body. Use it on those you despair of curing. When giving this purge, administer as follows: give this for seven days as a liquid food. When there is appetite, give donkey meat. If the patient will not eat that, give boiled cabbage and bread, and a mild wine mixed with water to drink. The patient should wash only occasionally, using oil instead. One thus treated will long remain healthy and suffer no sickness unless self-induced.

If there is a suppurating or fresh sore, sprinkle this ground wild cabbage with water and apply: you will cure it.

In the case of a fistula, insert it as a pack. If the pack will not stay in, dilute the ground cabbage, put in a bladder, attach a reed, squeeze into the fistula. This will soon effect a cure.

Also apply, ground, with honey, to any wounds old or recent. This will cure them.

If there is a nasal polyp, put dried ground wild cabbage in a tuft of wool; put to the patient’s nose to aspire as much as possible. Within three days the polyp will fall out. When it has done so continue the treatment for an equal number of days to heal up the roots of the polyp completely.

If you are hard of hearing grind cabbage with wine, press out the juice, drop into the ear warm. You will soon be aware of hearing more.

Apply cabbage to a suppurating scab. It will cure it without causing a sore."