Harvesting - Wheat for the "Ailing" 1150

Book of Hours, France, Rouen or Orléans, last quarter of 15th century MS G.4 fol. 9r

How to Use Wheat

 "Wheat is hot and full of profit. Nothing is lacking in it… But, if anyone sifts out the bran from the flour (which is semolina), and then makes bread from that flour, the bread is weaker and more feeble than if it had been made from the proper flour…Whosoever cooks wheat without the entire grain, or wheat not ground in the mill, it is as if he eats another food, for this wheat furnishes neither correct blood nor healthy flesh, but more mucus. It is scarcely digested. It is not at all good for a sick person, even if a healthy person is able to survive on this food… If someone is ailing in his back or loins, cook grains of wheat in water, and place them, warm, over the place where he is ailing. The heat of the wheat will chase away the powers of that disease." 

    Hildegard of Bingen, Physica, c. 1150

Thanks to Elizabeth B. Archibald's "Ask The Past"