Messenger of the swallow, celandine is the subject of one of the most complicated herbal remedies:
Take gallingall, cloves, cubibs, ginger, mellilote, cardamonia, maces, nutmegs, one dram. Of the juice of salandine, 8 drams. Mingle all these made in powder with the said juice and a pint of acquavit, and three pints of white wine. Put it into a stillitory of glass and the next day still it with an easy fire. This water is an excellent virtue against consumption or any other disease that proceeds from rheume, choler or fleagme.
If that seems complex, the lore of the arum is more so – Gerard informs us that:
Beares after they have lien in their dens forty days without any manner of sustenance, but what they get from licking and sucking their own feet, doe as soone as they come forth eat the herb cuckoo pint. Through the windie nature thereof the hungry gut is opened.
But the plant has more practical uses than causing bears to fart. It was used to starch the ruffs that Titian’s dark young men wear – a beauty bought at the expense of the laundresses’ hands, which this most pure white starch chappeth, blistereth and maketh rough and rugged and withal smarting.