PALSYWORT

An old name for COWSLIP, which shows that it must have been used for that complaint. It must have been the trembling or nodding of the flowers that suggested it (Grigson. 1955). The Regimen Sanitatus Salernitanum had commended the cowslip as a cure for palsy or paralysis (hence another old name, Herb Paralysy). Gerard repeated the prescription – “cowslips are commended against the pain of the joints called the gout, and slacknesse of the sinues, which is the palsie”.