Nervous Complaints

A note on the heading

Plain sense

Not recoverable from the text: no sentence uses the phrase. “Nervous” in 1850 could mean of the nerves or anxious, both senses being on record by then, and one index name does not settle which.

What the entries treat

One claim, from the index alone: Privet, listed at pages 230, 356 and 363 with no sentence naming it. Nothing in the quotations says what the 1850 index meant by the heading; its one sub-line is Head-ache (CND-0099).

Where the word comes from

Middle English nervous “composed of or incorporating nerves”, from Latin nervōsus, from nervus “nerve; muscle; sinew, tendon”. The sense “affecting or involving the nerves or nervous system” is on record from the 15th century (Cheyne 1733, “All Nervous Distempers whatsoever”); “apprehensive, anxious” from the 18th.

Today’s words

nervous disorders (the older sense: of the nerves); neurological complaints; anxiety (the later sense) — uncertain: the text does not let us tell.

How it reads today

A false friend either way. “Nervous” now means anxious; in the 1850 index it reads, our reading, as of the nerves, the sense in which the doctors of the century before wrote of “nervous distempers” and “a slow nervous fever”, and the index’s one sub-line under it is headache. With one index name and no sentence the text does not let us tell, so the terms offered cover both readings; none is a match.

References

Wiktionary, s.v. “nervous” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English nervous “composed of or incorporating nerves”, Latin nervōsus, nervus “nerve; muscle; sinew, tendon”; sense “affecting or involving the nerves or nervous system”, from 15th c., Cheyne 1733 “All Nervous Distempers whatsoever” and Gentleman’s Magazine 1774 “a slow nervous fever”; senses “easily agitated or alarmed; edgy, on edge” and “apprehensive, anxious, hesitant, worried”, from 18th c.

ThinkDeep333, 2026-10-28 · draft, not yet checked. Offered beside Culpeper’s heading, never in its place; nothing here says whether a plant works.