Historical label: “Chops of the hands, &c” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern literature has not yet been searched for this heading’s claims: it comes only from the 1850 index and has no search words yet.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Chops are chaps: the cracks that open in the skin of the hands in cold and dry weather, and the “&c” extends it to lips and other parts. No sentence of Culpeper’s says so; this is the word’s dictionary sense.
What the entries treat
One index name and no sentence: “Pomatum”, which the 1850 index sends to page 361, a name the book has no herbal entry for. No quotation is recorded.
Where the word comes from
Chap, from Middle English chappen “to split open, burst, chap”, of uncertain origin; “chop” is listed as a dated spelling of the same noun, “a crack or cleft; a chap”. Pomatum is Medieval Latin, from Latin pōmum “fruit, apple”: an ointment, “called in shops Pomatum, of the Apples whereof it is made” in the dictionary’s 1597 quotation.
Today’s words
chapped hands; chapped skin; cracked skin; skin fissures — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Reads as it did once the spelling is seen through: chops are chapped hands. The index’s one answer is pomatum, an ointment a reader of 1850 would have bought rather than grown; the dictionary’s 1657 quotation has it “of much use to soften and supple the roughnesse of the skin”.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “chap” (accessed 2026-10-28): Etymology 2, “From Middle English chappen (‘to split open, burst, chap’), of uncertain origin”; noun “A cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth, or in the skin”; verb “Of the skin, to split or flake due to cold weather or dryness”. Wiktionary, s.v. “chop” (accessed 2026-10-28): Etymology 1, “or a variant of chap (‘to become cracked’)”; noun sense “(dated) A crack or cleft; a chap”. Wiktionary, s.v. “pomatum” (accessed 2026-10-28): “From Medieval Latin pomatum (‘cider, ointment’), from Latin pōmum (‘fruit, apple’)”; “(uncommon, historical) Synonym of ointment, particularly thick waxy ointments scented with fruit”; quotations 1597 “called in shops Pomatum, of the Apples whereof it is made”, 1657 “of much use to soften and supple the roughnesse of the skin”.
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.
1 claim: 0 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone