Historical label: “Colds” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: colds. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with "common cold" OR rhinitis OR "upper respiratory tract infection" OR catarrh. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Two senses in six sentences: the common cold, a cough with a stuffed chest; and “a cold” as a chill lodged in a part of the body, a sinew or a swelling, in the hot-and-cold physiology.
What the entries treat
7 claims: 6 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone, and the word means two things. The cold in the chest: Wood Betony’s powder with honey “for all sorts of coughs or colds, wheesing, or shortness of breath”; Catmint “is used for colds, coughs, and shortness of breath”; Feverfew “to help the cough and stuffing of the chest, by colds”. And cold as a quality lodged in a part, which the plant warms away: Camomile in posset-drink “provokes sweat, and helps to expel all colds, aches, and pains whatsoever”; Arssmart’s juice “consumes all colds, swellings”; Garden Tansy in oil for “the sinews shrunk by cramps, or pained with colds”. “Juice Of Liquorice” is listed in the index under a name the book has no entry for.
Today’s words
common cold; upper respiratory infection; chill (for the second sense) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
The first sense reads as it did: a cold is a cold. The second, cold as a thing that sits in a sinew and is “consumed” or “expelled” by a warming plant, is humoral and has no modern name; “a chill” is the nearest survivor. Three of the six sentences are the first sense and three the second (our count).
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.
7 claims: 6 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone
The juice thereof dropped in, or otherwise applied, consumes all colds, swellings, and dissolveth the congealed blood of bruises by strokes, falls, &c.
The flowers boiled in posset-drink provokes sweat, and helps to expel all colds, aches, and pains whatsoever, and is an excellent help to bring down women’s courses.
The decoction thereof made with some sugar, or honey put thereto, is used by many with good success to help the cough and stuffing of the chest, by colds, as also to cleanse the reins and bladder, and helps to expel the stone in them.
It is effectual for any cramp, or cold aches, to dissolve cold and wind that afflict the place, and is used for colds, coughs, and shortness of breath.
The powder mixed with pure honey is no less available for all sorts of coughs or colds, wheesing, or shortness of breath, distillations of thin rheum upon the lungs, which causes consumptions.