Historical label: “Itch” 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
Not the feeling but a disease, “the itch”, with the definite article: a skin complaint that itches and scabs, treated in two of the four sentences by washing and drying. The four sentences describe it no further.
What the entries treat
4 claims: 4 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone. The complaint is “the itch”, a named thing, with scabs or sores beside it every time: the Black Alder-Tree’s inner bark boiled in vinegar “is an approved remedy to kill lice, to cure the itch, and take away scabs, by drying them up in a short time”; Stinking Gladwin’s juice “heals the itch, and all running or spreading scabs, sores, blemishes, or scars in the skin, wheresoever they be”; a lye of Juniper wood ashes, the body bathed with it, “cures the itch, scabs and leprosy”; Celandine, used often, “helps the dropsy and the itch, and those who have old sores in their legs, or other parts of the body”.
Where the word comes from
Old English ġiċċe, from a Germanic word “of unknown origin”.
Today’s words
itchy skin rash; itching (pruritus, the medical word for the symptom); scabies (our reading of “the itch” with scabs and lice in the same sentences, not a name the text gives) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
“Itch” today is the sensation, and the dictionary carries no disease sense at all; Culpeper’s is a disease. Reading it as scabies, today an infestation of the skin by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, fits the scabs and the lice that sit in the same sentences, and “the seven-year itch” is a name recorded for scabies in the 1800s; but the text names no cause, so scabies stays our reading and the heading takes in any itching skin disease.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “itch” (accessed 2026-10-28): noun from Middle English icche, Old English ġiċċe, Proto-Germanic *jukjǭ “of unknown origin”; the only noun senses are “A sensation felt on an area of the skin that causes a person or animal to want to scratch said area” and “A constant teasing desire or want”, no disease sense. Wikipedia, “Scabies” (accessed 2026-10-28): “a contagious human skin infestation by the tiny (0.2–0.45 mm) mite Sarcoptes scabiei, variety hominis”; “also sometimes known as the seven-year itch”, a name “recorded in many documents from the 1800s”.
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
CelandineChelidonium majusCLM-0023461850 index, p. 42
and often using it, helps the dropsy and the itch, and those who have old sores in their legs, or other parts of the body.