Historical label: “Faintings” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: fainting. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with syncope OR hypotension OR fainting OR cardiotonic. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Fainting and swooning: losing one’s senses, going weak, the heart “trembling”. In the old physiology a failure of the heart’s “vital spirits”, which a cordial restores.
What the entries treat
13 claims, all with a sentence, and most pair fainting with swooning; the remedy is a “cordial”, a thing that “comforts the heart”. Balm, from Seraphio, “revives the heart, faintings and swoonings, especially of such who are overtaken in sleep”; Gentian “comforts the heart, and preserves it against faintings and swoonings”; Motherwort “for the trembling of the heart, and faintings and swoonings”; the old Conserve of Roses with Aromaticum Rosarum “is a very good cordial against faintings, swoonings, weakness, and tremblings of the heart”; Rosa Solis “comforts the heart and fainting spirits”; Strawberries “to refresh and comfort the fainting spirits”.
Where the word comes from
Faint, from Old French faint, feint “feigned; negligent; sluggish”, past participle of feindre “to feign”, Latin fingere; the Middle English word meant weak, feeble. Swoon is from Old English ġeswōgen “insensible, senseless, dead”. Cordial is Medieval Latin cordiālis “of the heart”, from cor.
Today’s words
fainting; syncope; swooning; light-headedness; palpitations (the “trembling of the heart”) — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Fainting is what it was; medicine’s word is syncope, “a loss of consciousness and muscle strength characterized by a fast onset, short duration, and spontaneous recovery”, from a drop in blood flow to the brain. “Swoon” has gone literary. A “cordial” is now a drink; the dictionary keeps the older sense, “Anything that revives or comforts, a stimulant”, which is Culpeper’s, and the heart was where fainting was thought to live. “Trembling of the heart” reads today as palpitations.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “faint” (accessed 2026-10-28): Middle English faynt, feynt (‘weak; feeble’), from Old French faint, feint (‘feigned; negligent; sluggish’), from feindre, faindre (‘to feign; sham; work negligently’), from Latin fingere; “Cognate with feign and fiction”; verb “To lose consciousness through a lack of oxygen or nutrients to the brain”; noun “The act of fainting, syncope”. Wiktionary, s.v. “swoon” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English swounen, swonen (‘to faint’), “ultimately from Old English ġeswōgen (‘insensible, senseless, dead’)”; noun “A faint”. Wiktionary, s.v. “cordial” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Medieval Latin cordiālis (‘of the heart’), from cor (‘heart’); senses “A pleasant-tasting medicine”, “Anything that revives or comforts, a stimulant” (Austen 1814, “Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial”), and the drink. Wikipedia, “Syncope (medicine)” (accessed 2026-10-28): “is a loss of consciousness and muscle strength characterized by a fast onset, short duration, and spontaneous recovery”; “It is caused by a decrease in blood flow to the brain, typically from low blood pressure”.
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.
13 claims: 13 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
Seraphio says, it causes the mind and heart to become merry, and revives the heart, faintings and swoonings, especially of such who are overtaken in sleep, and drives away all troublesome cares and thoughts out of the mind, arising from melancholy or black choler;
This is accounted the most effectual for melancholy diseases, and to purge black or burnt choler, which is the cause of many diseases of the head and brain, as also for the trembling of the heart, faintings and swoonings.
Heart TrefoilMedicago arabicaCLM-0007141850 indexNot in 1652
It is under the dominion of the Sun, and if it were used, it would be found as great a strengthener of the heart, and cherisher of the vital spirits as grows, relieving the body against fainting and swoonings, fortifying it against poison and pestilence, defending the heart against the noisome vapours of the spleen.
Lavender is of a special good use for all the griefs and pains of the head and brain that proceed of a cold cause, as the apoplexy, falling-sickness, the dropsy, or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsions, palsies, and often faintings.
Drank with wine, it helps such as are bitten and stung with venomous beasts, and applied to the nostrils with vinegar, revives those that are fainting and swooning.
The old Conserve mixed with Aromaticum Rosarum, is a very good cordial against faintings, swoonings, weakness, and tremblings of the heart, strengthens, both it and a weak stomach, helps digestion, stays casting, and is a very good preservative in the time of infection.
Sorrel is prevalent in all hot diseases, to cool any inflammation and heat of blood in agues pestilential or choleric, or sickness and fainting, arising from heat, and to refresh the overspent spirits with the violence of furious or fiery fits of agues;
some spices being added, comforts and strengthens the decaying and fainting spirits, and helps the liver oppressed, that it cannot perfect the digestion, or corrects choler and phlegm.