Historical label: “Rickets” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: rickets. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with rickets OR "vitamin D" OR "bone mineral" OR osteomalacia. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A children’s disease that “hinders their growth”, read by Culpeper as a binding or drawing-together of the nerves and ligaments; he mocks the physicians’ quarrel over its Latin name.
What the entries treat
Four claims: two with a sentence, two from the index alone. The Down, or Cotton-Thistle, by Galen, for “such persons as have their bodies drawn together by some spasm or convulsion, as it is with children that have the rickets”; the Woollen Thistle for “the rickets (or as the college of physicians would have it, Rachites, about which name they have quarrelled sufficiently) in children, being a disease that hinders their growth, by binding their nerves, ligaments, and whole structure of their body”. Fern is an index name with no sentence, and Syrup Hart’s-Tongue an index name the book has no herbal entry for.
Where the word comes from
Unknown: Wiktionary has it as “originally a local name for the disease in Dorset and Somerset”. The medical name rachitis, Greek rhákhis “spine”, was chosen by the physician Daniel Whistler “from phonetic similarity to rickets”, and Wiktionary names Francis Glisson (1597–1677) as using the New Latin rachitis for rickets. Culpeper’s “Rachites” is that name.
Today’s words
rickets; vitamin D deficiency; rachitis (medicine’s Latin name) — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
The same word and the same disease: “a disorder of infancy and early childhood due to a deficiency of vitamin D, causing soft or weak bones”. Culpeper’s cause, the nerves and ligaments bound, is the old physiology; the bones are not in his sentence. The name quarrel he laughs at left both words in the dictionary.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “rickets” (accessed 2026-10-28): etymology “Unknown. Originally a local name for the disease in Dorset and Somerset, England”, a Dorset dialect rucket “to breathe with difficulty, wheeze” postulated but “the semantic connection is tenuous”; “the medical name was chosen purposefully by English physician Daniel Whistler from phonetic similarity to rickets”; sense “(pathology) a disorder of infancy and early childhood due to a deficiency of vitamin D, causing soft or weak bones”, synonyms rachitis, rhachitis. Wiktionary, s.v. “rachitis” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Koine Greek ῥαχῖτις (νόσος) “spinal disease”, from ῥάχις “backbone, spine”; New Latin rachitis “used by the physician Francis Glisson (1597–1677) for rickets”; sense “(pathology) rickets”.
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: 2 with a sentence, 2 from the index alone
whereby they cannot turn their neck but their whole body must turn also (sure they do not mean those that have got a crick in their neck by being under the hangman’s hand.) Galen saith, that the root and leaves hereof are of a healing quality, and good for such persons as have their bodies drawn together by some spasm or convulsion, as it is with children that have the rickets.
as the rickets (or as the college of physicians would have it, Rachites, about which name they have quarrelled sufficiently) in children, being a disease that hinders their growth, by binding their nerves, ligaments, and whole structure of their body.