Ø Centaury (European):
European
Centaury
§ Warning: No known interactions.
∞
Botanical name: Erythraea centaurium A Modern Herbal; Köhler's Medicinal Plants Wikipedia.org
∞
Chinese Botanical name:
---Description--- Used medicinally as a stomachic particularly heartburn and tonic, over pain of muscular rheumatism, stimulate liver and bile action along with urination
problems.
---Synonyms--- Centaury
Gentian, Century, Red Centaury, Filwort, Centory, Christ's Ladder, Feverwort.
---Part Used--- The
whole herb when just breaking into flower and dried.
---Medicinal
Action and Uses--- Aromatic bitter, stomachic and tonic. It acts on
the liver and kidneys, purifies the blood, and is an excellent tonic. A infusion may also be taken for muscular rheumatism.
Old
Herbalists prescribed it largely for snake-bites and other poisons, and it was long celebrated for the cure of intermittent
fevers, hence its name of Feverwort.
Centaury is given
with Barberry Bark for jaundice as a doctrine. It has also been much employed as a vermifuge (worms).
The green herb,
bruised, is reputed to be good as an application to wounds and sores.
“Culpepper” tells us that:
'the
herbe is so safe that you cannot fail in the using of it, only give it inwardly for inward diseases, use it outwardly for
outward diseases. 'Tis very wholesome, but not very toothsome.'
'it
helps those that have the dropsy, or the green-sickness, being much used by the Italians in powder for that purpose. It kills
worms ... as is found by experience.... A dram of the powder taken in wine, is a wonderful good help against the biting and
poison of an adder. The juice of the herb with a little honey put to it, is good to clear the eyes from dimness, mists and
clouds that offend or hinder sight. It is singularly good both for green and fresh wounds, as also for old ulcers and sores,
to close up the one and cleanse the other, and perfectly to cure them both, although they are hollow or fistulous; the green
herb, especially, being bruised and laid thereto. The decoction thereof dropped into the ears, cleanses them from worms .
. . and takes away all freckles, spots, and marks in the skin, being washed with it.'
 ---References--- “Herbal Medicine – The Natural way to Get Well and Stay Well” by – Dian Dincin Buchman,
PhD, Copyright 1979, 1996 ISBN: 0-517-14767-x, Pages 85, 162, 184, 211.
 ---References--- A Modern Herbal.
 ---Reference--- Wikipedia.org
