Historical label: “Pleurisies” 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
Pleurisy: a disease of the chest with a sharp pain in the side on breathing, in the old books the “stitch” (see CND-0102). The one index name gives no sentence.
What the entries treat
One claim, from the index alone: Lohoch of Poppies, a preparation named at pages 313 and 321 that the book has no herbal entry for; no sentence names the complaint. Culpeper’s pleurisy sentences sit under Shortness of Breath (CND-0118): Angelica “helpeth the pleurisy”, Nettles “to raise the imposthumed pleurisy”.
Where the word comes from
Middle English pleuresi, Old French pleuresie, Late Latin pleurisis, an alteration of Latin pleuritis; by surface analysis pleur- + -isy. Lohoch, the index’s preparation, is Medieval Latin lohoc, from Arabic laʕq “to lick”: a licking-medicine, “of a consistence between an electuary and a sirup”.
Today’s words
pleurisy; pleuritis; pleuritic chest pain — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
The same word: inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the lungs, with pain worse on a deep breath. The one index name is a pharmacy preparation, not a plant, and the index points to pages outside the herbal entries for it; so this heading has nothing of Culpeper’s plants under it.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “pleurisy” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English pleuresi, Old French pleuresie, Late Latin pleurisis, “alteration of Latin pleuritis”; surface analysis pleur- + -isy; sense “(pathology) inflammation of lung pleura”; Jacoby and Youngson 2005 “pleurisy usually causes pain, which is made worse by deep breathing”. Wiktionary, s.v. “lohoch” (accessed 2026-10-28): borrowed from Medieval Latin lohoc, looch, from Arabic لَعْق “to lick”; sense “(medicine) a medicine in a soft form taken by licking; a lambative, a linctus”; Donné 1859 “a medicine of a consistence between an electuary and a sirup”.
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.
1 claim: 0 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone