This book contains curious and fascinating information about herbs - herbs for cooking, herbs for healing, sweet-smelling herbs for laying among clothes, and still other herbs. To read these pages is to look through a window into the intimate daily life of our mediaeval forebears. We learn what infusions were used to "make a good color in the face" (Madonna lily); how to "comfort the stomach" (wild strawberry) and keep witches away from the house (periwinkle and mallow); how to "make folk merry at table" (vervain); and how to cure a "cold humour in the head" (pennyroyal). Eighty-five different herbs are described and most of them are illustrated in handsome reproductions of woodcuts from fifteenth and sixteenth century herbals. This is a book for anyone who loves unusual lore from the past.