Printed in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases” as “—— Quartan” under “Agues” (the dash stands for the heading above it, or its first word); shown here as “Agues — Quartan”.
Modern reading: quartan malaria (P. malariae). Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with malaria OR antimalarial OR antiplasmodial OR Plasmodium. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A fever whose fit comes back every fourth day by the old inclusive count, that is every third day by ours: a 72-hour cycle.
What the entries treat
12 claims. The ague whose fit returns on the fourth day, counting both ends. Culpeper treats it as a disease of melancholy (black bile): Carduus Benedictus “cures quartan agues, and other diseases of melancholy”, Black Hellebore “all melancholy diseases, especially such as are of long standing, as quartan agues and madness”, Polypody for “melancholy, or quartan agues”, Meadowsweet is “to make a merry heart” and Archangel “makes the heart merry”. Cinquefoil’s leaf-count cure (one leaf a quotidian, three a tertian, four a quartan) he reports and lays at Dioscorides’s door (“a hundred to one if it be not Dioscorides”). Fumitory is an index name with no sentence.
Where the word comes from
Latin (febris) quartana, from quartus “fourth”; into English through Anglo-Norman quartaine. “Quartan ague” is on record in 1621.
Today’s words
quartan malaria (Plasmodium malariae); 72-hour fever cycle — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
A fever on a three-day cycle is what medicine calls quartan malaria, after the one malaria parasite (Plasmodium malariae) whose fevers recur at about three-day intervals; so of all the ague headings this is the one with the closest modern name. Broad all the same: the 1653 diagnosis was the timetable, and nothing in the text says which quartan agues were malaria. The “melancholy” explanation belongs to the four humours.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “quartan” (accessed 2026-10-28): “Latin quartāna, short for febris quartana … recurring every four days”, from quartus “fourth”, into English through Anglo-Norman and Old French quartaine; adjective quotation dated 1621, “frequent use of it may breed a quartan ague”. Wikipedia, “Plasmodium malariae” (accessed 2026-10-28): “fevers that recur at approximately three-day intervals – a quartan fever or quartan malaria”; “the only human malaria parasite that causes fevers which recur at approximately three-day intervals”; “the total length of the intraerythrocytic development is roughly 72 hours”.
ThinkDeep333, 2026-10-28 · draft, not yet checked. Offered beside Culpeper’s heading, never in its place; nothing here says whether a plant works.
Old claims, quoted verbatim: not medical advice. A warning sits above the claims and never hides them; no warning does not mean safe, only that no source here has flagged the plant.
12 claims: 11 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone
It makes the heart merry, drives away melancholy, quickens the spirits, is good against quartan agues, stancheth bleeding at mouth and nose, if it be stamped and applied to the nape of the neck;
Dioscorides saith, that three roots boiled in wine and taken, helps the tertain agues, and for the quartan agues, (but letting the number pass as fabulous) I conceive the decoction of divers roots may be effectual.
Meuse (who is called the Physician’s Evangelist for the certainty of his medicines, and the truth of his opinion) saith, That it dries up thin humours, digests thick and tough, and purges burnt choler, and especially tough and thick phlegm, and thin phlegm also, even from the joints, and therefore good for those that are troubled with melancholy, or quartan agues, especially if it be taken in whey or honied water, or in barley-water, or the broth of a chicken with Epithymum, or with Beets and Mallows.
It is said to alter and take away the fits of the quartan agues, and to make a merry heart, for which purpose some use the flowers, and some the leaves.
It provokes urine and women’s courses, and is singularly good against the yellow jaundice, tertian and quartan agues, if the juice thereof be taken, but especially made up into a syrup.