Historical label: “Asthma” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: asthma. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with asthma OR bronchodilator OR bronchial. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Laboured, wheezing breath that comes in fits.
What the entries treat
Two names. Woodbine (Honeysuckle): “I know no better cure for an asthma than this”. Lungwort is listed in the index with no sentence naming it (pages 109, 313, 346). The book’s other words for the same ground are headings of their own: Shortness of Breath, Wheezing, Chest (diseases of).
Where the word comes from
Greek âsthma, “laborious breathing”; the -th- was added in the 16th century.
Today’s words
asthma; wheeze; breathlessness; chronic obstructive lung disease (for some of what the old word covered) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
The same word, narrower now: asthma is a named long-term condition of the airways. In 1653 the word was the symptom, laboured breathing by fits, whatever caused it, so a “cure for an asthma” may have been for any wheezing chest.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “asthma” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Ancient Greek ἆσθμα “laborious breathing, asthma”; the -th- added in the 16th century.
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.
2 claims: 1 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone
LungwortLobaria pulmonariaCLM-0022701850 index, pp. 109, 313, 346
Listed in the 1850 index; the herbal entry has no sentence naming this complaint. No quotation is recorded.