Historical label: “Quinsey” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: quinsy. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with tonsillitis OR "peritonsillar abscess" OR pharyngitis OR "sore throat". The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A severe sore throat, set beside the mumps and the “putrid sores of the mouth and throat”; Culpeper does not describe it further.
What the entries treat
Six claims: three with a sentence, three from the index alone. Cinquefoil’s juice “drank, about four ounces at a time, for certain days together, cures the quinsey and yellow jaundice”; Cudweed’s juice in wine and milk “is, as Pliny saith, a sovereign remedy against the mumps and quinsey”; the Bramble’s green buds, leaves and branches for “the ulcers and putrid sores of the mouth and throat, and of the quinsey”. Hyssop, Orpine and Ragwort are index names with no sentence.
Where the word comes from
Middle English quinesye, Old French quinencie, Medieval Latin quinancia, from Greek kunánkhē “canine quinsy”, from kúōn “dog” and ánkhō “throttle”: a dog-strangling. Wiktionary lists “quinsey” as an obsolete spelling.
Today’s words
quinsy (peritonsillar abscess); severe tonsillitis; sore throat — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
The word survives in medicine with a narrow sense: a peritonsillar abscess, “a painful pus-filled inflammation or abscess of the tonsils and surrounding tissues, usually a complication of tonsillitis”. Whether Culpeper’s quinsey was that or any bad throat the three sentences do not say. The tonsils are under Almonds of the Ears, CND-0008.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “quinsy” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English quinesye, Old French quinencie, Medieval Latin quinancia, Ancient Greek κυνάγχη “canine quinsy”, κύων “dog” + ἄγχω “throttle”, doublet of cynanche; alternative forms “quinsey (obsolete), quinzy”; sense “(medicine) a peritonsillar abscess; a painful pus-filled inflammation or abscess of the tonsils and surrounding tissues, usually a complication of tonsillitis, caused by bacterial infection and often accompanied by fever”; Conan Doyle 1891 “He’d had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young”.
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.
6 claims: 3 with a sentence, 3 from the index alone
The buds, leaves, and branches, while they are green, are of a good use in the ulcers and putrid sores of the mouth and throat, and of the quinsey, and likewise to heal other fresh wounds and sores;