VANGLO, OR OIL PLANT. SESAMUM. From Barham

This is called zesamum, or sesamum Africanum. The first time I saw this plant, it was growing in a negro's plantation, who told me, they ground the seeds between two stones, and eat it as they do corn. I observed it hath a small long fibrous root, from whence springs up a straight square stalk, like a nettle, two or three feet high, set about with long leaves opposite to one another, and jagged, much resembling the lamium, or archangel; and at the tops of the stalks come forth divers white flowers, like digitalis; after which come their seed-vessels, full of small white seeds, which the negroes call soonga, or wolongo, which is much like the sago sold in shops, but very oily. The oil that is drawn from it is called sergilim-oil. The seed is often mixed and ground with coco, to make chocolate. In Ethiopia and Egypt, they use the oil as we do oil-olive: It is made by grinding the seed, and expressing the oil, as they do by other seeds. The seed and oil are hot, moist, emollient, and resolving; breed gross nourishment, and therefore hurtful to weak stomachs. Dropped into the ear, it is good to soften the hard wax, and help deafness. A decoction of the plant is good for coughs, pleurisies, inflammations of the lungs, hard schirrous tumours, and women use it for hardness of the womb. The herb and seed, boiled in honey, make a good cataplasm or poultice for hard tumours, and dried nerves or shrunk sinews; so doth the oil. A decoction of the whole herb, flowers, and seeds, is good in clysters, to soften the belly, and give a stool or two. The juice of the herb or distilled water is good for sore eyes. The decocted seed fattens, the oil more, and the dregs (which are eaten for food in Ethiopia) more than the oil; women often drink the oil, to be fat. The dregs (when they make the oil by boiling) is given to four ounces in pleurisies and pains, and in all diseases of the skin, outwardly as well as inwardly. In Greece, they use it for cakes, mixing it in making their bread. In Bengal it is planted to make oil; but it makes ground poor. The oil takes off the roughness of the throat, clears the voice, and mollifies hard imposthumes. This oil is better for making odoriferous oil than others, because of its durability. The oil, if taken to four ounces for many days, is good against the itch, hard breathing, pleurisies, pains in the stomach, womb, and guts, and is every way as effectual as linseed oil. Sir H. Sloane saith, that mr. James Cunningham, F. R. S. and his very good friend, wrote to him from China, where he was physician to the English factory, informing him, that the bean, or mandarin broth, so frequently mentioned in the Dutch embassy, and other authors, is only an emulsion made of the seeds of sesamum in hot water.—Barham, p. 121.