Historical label: “Dizziness of the Head” 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
Giddiness: the head swimming or turning. Culpeper’s own word in the one sentence is “giddiness”, the index says dizziness, and he files it among the cold diseases of the head.
What the entries treat
Three claims, all with a sentence, and only one names the thing: Sow-fennel’s juice to the nose “helps those that are troubled with the lethargy, frenzy, giddiness of the head, the falling sickness, long and inveterate head-aches”. The index sends the other two to pages about the head’s cold diseases: Rosemary “helps all cold diseases, both of the head, stomach, liver, and belly”; Sweet Marjoram “is warming and comfortable in cold diseases of the head, stomach, sinews, and other parts”.
Where the word comes from
Dizzy is Old English dysiġ “stupid, foolish” (the Proto-West Germanic sense “stunned; dazed”); giddy is Old English gidiġ “possessed by a demon or spirit, insane, mad”. Both began as words for a disordered mind.
Today’s words
dizziness; vertigo (when the room spins); light-headedness; giddiness — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
Reads as it did, but the word is a symptom with many causes and the three sentences give none beyond “cold”. Medicine splits dizziness into vertigo (a sense of spinning) and light-headedness (the feeling before a faint); the heading does not. Two of the three sentences never name dizziness at all: the index points at them, and this row follows the index.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “dizzy” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English dysy, desy, dusi, “from Old English dysiġ (‘stupid, foolish’)”, “from Proto-West Germanic *dusīg (‘stunned; dazed’)”; sense “Experiencing a sensation of whirling and of being giddy, unbalanced, or lightheaded”; Drayton 1627, “Alas! his brain was dizzy”. Wiktionary, s.v. “giddy” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Old English gidiġ, gydiġ (‘possessed by a demon or spirit, insane, mad’); sense “Feeling a sense of spinning in the head, causing a perception of unsteadiness and being about to fall down; dizzy”; Boyle 1665, “my Head began to grow giddy”.
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.
3 claims: 3 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
RosemarySalvia rosmarinusCLM-0022911850 index, p. 155
The physical use of it (being my present task) is very much used both for inward and outward diseases, for by the warming and comforting heat thereof it helps all cold diseases, both of the head, stomach, liver, and belly.
The juice of Sow-Fennel (saith Dioscorides, and Galen,) used with vinegar and rose water, or the juice with a little Euphorbium put to the nose, helps those that are troubled with the lethargy, frenzy, giddiness of the head, the falling sickness, long and inveterate head-aches, the palsy, sciatica, and the cramp, and generally all the diseases of the sinews, used with oil and vinegar.
Sweet MarjoramOriganum majoranaCLM-0022891850 index, pp. 113, 298
Our common Sweet Marjoram is warming and comfortable in cold diseases of the head, stomach, sinews, and other parts, taken inwardly, or outwardly applied.