Printed in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases” as “—— Ache” under “Head” (the dash stands for the heading above it, or its first word); shown here as “Head — Ache”.
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
Pain in the head, as the four sentences tell it apart: of heat (Duck’s Meat, Privet); with giddiness (Beets’ “swimmings” and “turnings of the brain”); long-standing (Ivy).
What the entries treat
Four claims, all with a sentence. Beets’ juice “is good for the head-ache and swimmings therein, and turnings of the brain”; Duck’s Meat fresh to the forehead “eases the pains of the head-ache coming of heat”; Ivy with rose-water and oil of roses to the temples “eases the head-ache, though it be of long continuance”; Privet’s oil “for the headache, coming of a hot cause”. Two of the four are laid on the forehead and temples.
Today’s words
headache; (for “swimmings” and “turnings of the brain”) dizziness, vertigo — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Reads as it did. Medicine sorts headache by type (tension, migraine, and the rest) and looks for a cause; the “hot cause” and “cold cause” are the four qualities, with no modern counterpart.
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.
4 claims: 4 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
PrivetLigustrum vulgareCLM-0023301850 index, p. 146
He further saith, That the oil that is made of the flowers of Privet infused therein, and set in the Sun, is singularly good for the inflammations of wounds, and for the headache, coming of a hot cause.