5.  Take twelve peony seeds, and beat them into a very fine powder, and let her drink them in a draught of hot cardus posset, and let her sweat after.  And if the last medicine do not bring them down the first time she takes it, let her take as much more three hours after, and it seldom fails.

IV.  Overflowing of the menses is another accident incidental to child-bed women.  For which,

1.  Take shepherd’s purse, either boiled in any convenient liquor, or dried and beaten into a powder, and it will be an admirable remedy to stop them, this being especially appropriated to the privities.

2.  The flower and leaves of brambles or either of them, being dried and beaten into a powder, and a drachm of them taken every morning in a spoonful of red wine, or in a decoction of leaves of the same (which, perhaps, is much better), is an admirable remedy for the immoderate flowing of the term in women.

V. Excoriations, bruises, and rents in the lower part of the womb are often occasioned by the violent distention and separation of the caruncles in a woman’s labour.  For the healing whereof,

As soon as the woman is laid, if there be only simple contusions and excoriations, then let the anodyne cataplasm, formerly directed, be applied to the lower parts to ease the pain, made of the yolks and whites of new laid eggs, and oil of roses, boiled a little over warm embers, continually stirring it until it be mixed, and then spread on a fine cloth; it must be applied very warm to the bearing place for five or six hours, and when it is taken away, lay some fine rags, dipped in oil of St. John’s wort twice or thrice a day; also foment the parts with barley water and honey of roses, to cleanse them from the excrements which pass.  When the woman makes water, let them be defended with fine rags, and thereby hinder the urine from causing smart or pain.

VI.  The curding and clotting of the milk is another accident that happens to women in child-bed, for in the beginning of child-bed, the woman’s milk is not purified because of the great commotions her body suffered during her labour, which affected all the parts, and it is then affected with many humours.  Now this clotting of the milk does, for the most part, proceed from the breasts not being fully drawn, and that, either because she has too much milk, and that the infant is too small and weak to suck it all, or because she doth not desire to be a nurse, for the milk in those cases remaining in the breasts after concoction, without being drawn, loses its sweetness and the balsamic qualities it had, and by reason of the heat it requires, and the too long stay it makes there, is sours, curds and clots, in like manner as we see rennet put into ordinary milk to turn it into curds.  The curding of the milk may also be caused by having taken a great cold, and not keeping the breasts well covered.