Historical label: “Ears” 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
Complaints of the ear: ringing (“noise and singing”), deafness, pain. The bare index heading; the sentences say what it holds.
What the entries treat
Three claims, all with a sentence, all dropped into the ear. Alehoof’s juice “wonderfully helps the noise and singing of them, and helps the hearing which is decayed”; Sow Thistle’s juice heated in oil of bitter almonds in a pomegranate peel “is a sure remedy for deafness, singings, &c.”; the Fig-tree for “pain and noise in the ears, being dropped into them”.
Today’s words
tinnitus (the “singing”); hearing loss; earache — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
The “noise and singing” of the ears is what medicine calls tinnitus, a ringing or other sound with no outside source; “hearing which is decayed” is hearing loss; the Fig-tree’s is earache. Three complaints under one plain heading, so broad. Drops in the ear are still a form medicine uses.
References
Wikipedia, “Tinnitus” (accessed 2026-10-28): “Tinnitus is a condition when a person hears a ringing sound or a different variety of sounds” with no outside source; “The word tinnitus comes from the Latin tinnire, ‘to ring’”.
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
Sow ThistleSonchus oleraceusCLM-0022951850 index, pp. 173, 396
The juice boiled or thoroughly heated in a little oil of bitter almonds in the peel of a pomegranate, and dropped into the ears, is a sure remedy for deafness, singings, &c.