A PURLEY author has found a list of medieval herbal remedies which recommends smearing horse dung on loose teeth and rubbing dead bees onto a bald head to tackle hair loss.
And some of the treatments, like a skin cream made mostly from powdered lead, are so deadly the book comes with a "don't try this at home" safety warning.
The list of 700 plant names and 400 herbal treatments for ailments and injuries, known as a "herbal", is around 500 years old and was found by retired economist turned historian John Adams, from Purley.
He said: "None of the recipes are recommended for use now unless you are a trained herbalist. There is a health warning at the beginning of the book."
Mr Adams, who now runs a small publishing company which has published books on Croydon's history, found the herbal after going to St John's College, Cambridge, in search of the notebook of Thomas Betson, the librarian of Syon Abbey, a west London monastery, in the 15th century.
Mr Adams, who is originally from the West Midlands, had discovered a reference to the notebook while on an archaeological dig at Syon Abbey.
After he tracked the book down, he found it contained the herbal, thought to be the last written in an English monastery before the Reformation.
Also among the work's recommendations was comfrey herb, which is now known to cause liver collapse.
The herbal advised tackling gout with frog's legs ointment, with ointment from the frog's right leg to be applied to the patient's right leg, and ointment from the frog's left leg to be rubbed on the patient's left leg.
Mr Adams said the modern dandelion is called by its Latin name, Caput monachi, (meaning "monk's head") "because once the seeds have blown off it resembles the tonsured bald head of a priest".
He said the medieval cures, which included 20 recipes for sore eyes, only treated the symptoms of a problem, not the cause.
"If you had a pain in your side you took something for the pain in your side. But what was causing that pain? It could have been cancer. Treatments were very symptomatic," said Mr Adams.
The herbal also advises on how to diagnose illnesses and pregnancy from the colour of the patient's urine.
But Mr Adams does not know why Betson, who was a priest, compiled the list, as he was not a herbalist or a doctor.
"Because he was a librarian it is possible he did it out of personal interest," said Mr Adams.
Betson even included practical jokes in the notebook, including a guide to convincing people an apple is possessed.
This involved coring a cooking apple and placing a stag beetle inside it, before putting the top back on and placing it on a desk to watch it wiggle around.
The herbal's 120 pages of secrets were written in Latin, French, Middle English, and Greek.
About 15 people, including co-author and handwriting expert Stuart Forbes, helped linguist Mr Adams, who speaks Greek, medieval and modern French, German and medieval and modern English, translate the recipes. It took them two years to complete.
Mr Adams said: "I studied Latin and middle English at school, and this has been a way of going back to it."
Mr Adams will be talking to the Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society about the Herbal at 7.45pm on March 23, in East Croydon United Reformed Church, Addiscombe Grove.
Copies of the Herbal can be bought from AMCD Publishers – e-mail web@amcd.co.uk or call 020 86450405 for details.
