Historical label: “Scrophula” 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
The index’s Latin for the king’s evil: hard swellings, “kernels”, in the neck. No sentence under this heading.
What the entries treat
Two claims, both from the index alone: Celandine (page 220) and Eringo, or Sea-Holly (page 222), with no sentence naming it. Culpeper’s own name for the thing is the king’s evil, with its heading at CND-0075; Pilewort’s sentence under Piles (CND-0105) has “kernels by the ears and throat, called the king’s evil, or any other hard wens or tumours”.
Where the word comes from
Latin scrōfulae, a diminutive of scrōfa “breeding sow”, either because swine were thought prone to the disease or because the swellings were likened to little pigs (Wiktionary gives both). The index spells it with ph.
Today’s words
scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes of the neck); swollen neck glands; king’s evil (the old English name) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
Scrofula is still the word, now with a cause: “a form of tuberculosis” that produces “enlarged and degenerated lymph nodes, especially in the neck”. The king’s evil was its English name because English and French kings were held to cure it by touch, a claim Wiktionary’s source says was “exercised till the reign of Queen Anne” in England. The 1850 index chose the Latin; the herbal’s sentences use the English, which is where the plants are. The old diagnosis was looser than the modern one, so the mapping is broad: Pilewort’s sentence runs the king’s evil together with “any other hard wens or tumours”.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “scrofula” (accessed 2026-10-28): borrowed from Latin scrōfulae, diminutive of scrōfa “breeding sow”, “swine were thought to be prone to the disease” or the swellings “fancifully compared to little pigs”; sense “(pathology) a form of tuberculosis” with “enlarged and degenerated lymph nodes, especially in the neck”; synonyms scrofulosis, king’s evil, struma; R. H. C. Davis 1970 on the French king’s touch and the English kings’ claim “exercised till the reign of Queen Anne”.
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.
2 claims: 0 with a sentence, 2 from the index alone
CelandineChelidonium majusCLM-0024011850 index, p. 220
Listed in the 1850 index; the herbal entry has no sentence naming this complaint. No quotation is recorded.