House Leeks
28th July 2009 | Southlands Farm News
We have a very fine crop of House leeks on our pig sty wall this year, apart from the fact that they are an interesting curiosity, I was rather flummoxed as to what to say about them until I came across this excerpt from botanical.com by Mrs M. Grieve:
—Medicinal Action and Uses—Refrigerant, astringent, diuretic. In rural districts, the bruised leaves of the fresh plant, or its juice, are often applied as a poultice to burns, scalds, contusions, scrofulous ulcers, and in inflammatory conditions of the skin generally, giving immediate relief. If the juice be mixed with clarified lard and applied to an inflamed surface, the inflammation is quickly reduced.
It can be used in many skin diseases. Some old authorities recommend mixing the juice with cream.
With honey, the juice has been used to assuage the soreness and ulcerated condition of the mouth in thrush, the mixture being used with a hair pencil.
Boerhaave, the famous Dutch physician, found 10 oz. of the juice beneficial in dysentery, but it is not admitted into modern practice.
In large doses, Houseleek juice is emetic and purgative.
Dose, 2 to 10 drops.
- It is said to remove warts and corns. Parkinson tells us:
- ‘The juice takes away corns from the toes and feet if they be bathed therewith every day, and at night emplastered as it were with the skin of the same House Leek.’
The leaves sliced in two and the inner surface applied to warts, act as a positive cure for them.
- Culpepper informs us that:
- ‘Our ordinary Houseleek is good for all inward heats, as well as outward, and in the eyes or other parts of the body: a posset made of the juice is singularly good in all hot agues, for it cooleth and tempereth the blood and spirits and quencheth the thirst; and is also good to stay all defluction or sharp and salt rheums in the eyes, the juice being dropped into them. If the juice be dropped into the ears, it easeth pain…. It cooleth and restraineth all hot inflammations St. Anthony’s fire (Erysipelas), scaldings and burnings, the shingles, fretting ulcers, ringworms and the like; and much easeth the pain and the gout.’
- After describing the use of the leaves in the cure of corns, he goes on to say:
- ‘it easeth also the headache, and the distempered heat of the brain in frenzies, or through want of sleep, being applied to the temples and forehead. The leaves bruised and laid upon the crown or seam of the head, stayeth bleeding at the nose very quickly. The distilled water of the herb is profitable for all the purposes aforesaid. The leaves being gently rubbed on any place stung with nettles or bees, doth quickly take away the pain.’
- Gerard tells us the:
- ‘iuice of Houseleeke, Garden Nightshade and the buds of Poplar, boiled in hog’s grease, maketh the most singular Populeon that ever was used in Chirugerie.’
Galen recommends Houseleek for erysipelas and shingles, and Dioscorides as a remedy for weak and inflamed eyes. Pliny says it never fails to produce sleep.
In the fourteenth century it was used as an ingredient of a preparation for neuralgia, called hemygreyne, i.e. megrim, and an ointment used at that time for scalds and burns.
Culpepper speaks of the Small Houseleek, the Stonecrop Houseleek, the Common Stonecrop or Wallpepper, the Orpine, the Kidneywort and the Water Houseleek, some of which are known now under different names, the name Houseleek nowadays being reserved exclusively for the above-described species, Sempervivum tectorum.
Your photo shows them to look a lot like the typical Aloe Vera species of plant that are also well known to help burning and heat rash etc.
Brands such as Forever Living sell cream and all sorts of alternative medicine that uses it’s ingredients. Unlike most alternative medicines, the one you see actually works!