Historical label: “Ring-worm” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: ringworm. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with dermatophyte OR antifungal OR tinea OR ringworm. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A spreading skin eruption, paired every time with “tetters” (a tetter is any pustular skin condition) and laid to choler or to Mars. Culpeper never describes a ring.
What the entries treat
Five claims, always with “tetters”. Barberry’s inner rind in white wine “to cleanse the body of choleric humours, and free it from such diseases as choler causes, such as scabs, itch, tetters, ringworms, yellow jaundice, boils, &c.”; Carduus Benedictus “helps red faces, tetters, and ring-worms, because Mars causes them”; Celandine’s juice “often applied to tetters, ring-worms, or other such like spreading cankers, will quickly heal them”; Savine on leather at the navel “helps scabs and itch, running sores, cankers, tetters, and ringworms”; the oil of Wheat “heals all tetters and ring-worms, being used warm”.
Where the word comes from
Middle English ringworm, Old English rengwyrm, which meant a “maw-worm, intestinal worm”; ring + worm. Tetter: Old English teter, tetr, “any of various pustular skin conditions”, now rare; Burton (1624) has “a tetter in his nose continually running”.
Today’s words
ringworm; tinea (dermatophyte infection); fungal skin infection — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
A false friend in its own name: ringworm is no worm but a fungus, “a contagious fungal infection of the skin, characterized by ring-shaped discolored patches”, and medicine’s word is tinea, Latin for a moth or bookworm. Whether Culpeper’s “ring-worm” was always a fungal patch the sentences do not let us say; they treat it with the tetters as one spreading skin trouble. The “choler” and “Mars” are humours and astrology.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “ringworm” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English ringworm “ringworm; intestinal worm”, Old English rengwyrm “maw-worm, intestinal worm”, ring + worm; sense “a contagious fungal infection of the skin, characterized by ring-shaped discolored patches, covered by vesicles or scales”. Wiktionary, s.v. “tinea” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Latin tinea “moth; bookworm”; sense “(pathology) a fungal infection of the skin, known generally as ringworm”. Wiktionary, s.v. “tetter” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English teter, Old English teter, tetr, tetra; sense “(now rare) any of various pustular skin conditions”, Burton 1624 “a tetter in his nose continually running”.
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.
5 claims: 5 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
BarberryBerberis vulgarisCLM-0023991850 index, p. 16
The inner rind of the Barberry-tree boiled in white wine, and a quarter of a pint drank each morning, is an excellent remedy to cleanse the body of choleric humours, and free it from such diseases as choler causes, such as scabs, itch, tetters, ringworms, yellow jaundice, boils, &c.
The juice often applied to tetters, ring-worms, or other such like spreading cankers, will quickly heal them, and rubbed often upon warts, will take them away.
SavineJuniperus sabinaCLM-0023981850 index, p. 166Not in 1652
Being spread over a piece of leather, and applied to the navel, kills the worms in the belly, helps scabs and itch, running sores, cankers, tetters, and ringworms;