Historical label: “Measles” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: measles. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with measles OR "measles virus" OR antiviral OR exanthem. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A disease counted among the “epidemical” and “contagious” diseases with the small-pox and the plague, and treated by “expulsive” remedies and sweating, which bring the venom out.
What the entries treat
4 claims: 4 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone; paired with the small-pox in three, and with “pox” in Tormentil’s, and a disease the remedies drive out of the body. Alkanet is “as gallant a remedy to drive out the small pox and measles as any is”; Marigolds “strengthen the heart exceedingly, and are very expulsive, and a little less effectual in the small-pox and measles than saffron”; Saffron “is excellent in epidemical diseases, as pestilence, small-pox, and measles”; Tormentil with Venice treacle, “the person laid to sweat, expels any venom or poison, or the plague, fever, or other contagious diseases, as pox, measles, &c.”
Where the word comes from
Either from Middle Dutch masels or Middle Low German maselen, “red blemishes”, both from Old High German masala, “blood blister”: the spots, in the plural. A separate Middle English mesel, “leper”, from Old French and Late Latin misellus “leper”, from miser “wretched”, is a different word that Wiktionary says shaped the pronunciation, and “mesels” once meant leprosy.
Today’s words
measles (rubeola); measles virus infection — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
The same disease, now a named virus: an infection by the measles virus, spread “through the coughs and sneezes of infected people”, with a rash that “usually starts on the face and then spreads to the rest of the body”, and vaccine-preventable. The old word was wider, Wiktionary’s obsolete sense being “any disease causing red rashes”, so Culpeper’s measles was not always this one (our reading); the small-pox it is paired with in three of the four sentences is gone, its eradication certified in 1980.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “measles” (accessed 2026-10-28): Etymology 1 “Either from Middle Dutch … or Middle Low German …, both from Old High German masala”, glossed “blood blister”, Middle Low German “red blemishes”, “influenced in pronunciation by mesel”; Etymology 2 from Middle English mesel “leprous, leper”, Late Latin misellus “leper”, from miser “wretched, wretch”, with the sense “Alternative form of mesels: leprosy”; sense 1 “(pathology) An acute and highly contagious disease … caused by the virus Measles morbillivirus and causing red rashes, fever, runny nose, coughing, and red eyes”; sense 6 “(pathology, obsolete) Any disease causing red rashes”. Wikipedia, “Measles” (accessed 2026-10-28): “a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable infectious disease caused by the measles virus”; “spreads easily from one person to the next through the coughs and sneezes of infected people”; “a rash which usually starts on the face and then spreads to the rest of the body”. Wikipedia, “Smallpox” (accessed 2026-10-28): “caused by the variola virus”; “the World Health Organization certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980”.
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
The juice of the herb and root, or the decoction thereof, taken with some Venice treacle, and the person laid to sweat, expels any venom or poison, or the plague, fever, or other contagious diseases, as pox, measles, &c.