Historical label: “Sleep, (to procure)” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”. Shown as “Sleep (to procure)”.
Modern reading: sleep. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with sleep OR insomnia OR sedative OR hypnotic. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Sleep, and getting it. “Procure” here is the old sense, to bring about or cause, not to obtain; “want of sleep” is lack of it. The night-mare in Peony’s sentence is the old disease of that name, a weight and terror felt in sleep, not a bad dream.
What the entries treat
14 claims, all with a sentence. To “procure rest and sleep”: Poppy heads in a syrup, “used to procure rest, and sleep, in the sick and weak”; Dandelion “to bodies distempered by the heat of ague fits”; Roses; Hawk-weed, which also “hinders venery and venerous dreams”; and things laid to the head rather than drunk, Lettuce juice with oil of roses “applied to the forehead and temples”, the Peach tree’s kernel-milk, likewise “applied to the forehead and temples”, and Henbane with vinegar for “the head-ache and want of sleep in hot fevers”. Rushes “provokes sleep likewise, but must be given with caution”. Three entries treat the head-ache that comes of lost sleep rather than the sleep: Violets, “pains in the head, caused through want of sleep”; Houseleek, “the head-ache, and distempered heat of the brain in frenzies, or through want of sleep”; Purslain, pains in the head “proceeding from heat, want of sleep, or the frenzy”. Peony’s black seed is for the night-mare, “the disease called Ephialtes, or Incubus”, and Polypody is “against melancholy, or fearful and troublesome sleeps or dreams”.
Where the word comes from
Sleep is plain English. Night-mare is night + mare, the “mare” being the spirit thought to sit on sleepers; Ephialtes is Greek, Incubus Latin, from incubō, “one who lies down on the sleeper”.
Today’s words
insomnia; sleeplessness; sedative (said of the plant); headache from lack of sleep; nightmares; sleep paralysis (for the “Ephialtes, or Incubus”) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
“Procure sleep” reads oddly now, since procure means obtain; Culpeper means bring on. The complaint is what medicine calls insomnia, and a plant that brings sleep is what it calls a sedative. The false friend is in the sentences: “night-mare” in 1653 was a named disease, a feeling of suffocation or a weight on the sleeper, which Wiktionary glosses as sleep paralysis and Wikipedia traces to the “mare” that was thought to sit on sleepers’ chests. Rushes’ “must be given with caution” is Culpeper’s own warning.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “procure” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Old French procurer, Late Latin prōcūrāre “to manage, administer”; sense labelled obsolete, “To contrive; to bring about; to effect; to cause”, quotations More 1551 and Shakespeare c. 1594 (“to procure my fall”). Wiktionary, s.v. “nightmare” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Old English *nihtmare, night + mare (the “spirit” sense); sense “(now rare, from 14th c.) A demon or monster, thought to plague people while they slept and cause a feeling of suffocation and terror during sleep”; sense “(now chiefly historical, from 16th c.) A feeling of extreme anxiety or suffocation experienced during sleep; sleep paralysis”, with Bond 1753, An Essay on the Incubus, or Night-mare. Wiktionary, s.v. “incubus” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Latin incubō “nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper”; sense “A feeling of oppression during sleep, sleep paralysis; night terrors, a nightmare”. Wiktionary, s.v. “ephialtes” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Ancient Greek Ἐφιάλτης; “(obsolete) an incubus; a nightmare”, More 1662. Wikipedia, “Sleep paralysis” (accessed 2026-10-28): “Such sleep paralysis was widely considered the work of demons, and more specifically incubi, which were thought to sit on the chests of sleepers. In Old English, the name for these beings was mare or mære … hence comes the mare in the word nightmare.”
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.
14 claims: 14 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
it procures rest and sleep, hinders venery and venerous dreams, cooling heats, purges the stomach, increases blood, and helps the diseases of the reins and bladder.
The juice of Lettuce mixed or boiled with Oil of Roses, applied to the forehead and temples procures sleep, and eases the headache proceeding of an hot cause:
The black seed also taken before bed-time, and in the morning, is very effectual for such as in their sleep are troubled with the disease called Ephialtes, or Incubus, but we do commonly call it the Night-mare:
The distilled water both of roots and leaves, is much commended for the quartan ague, to be taken for many days together, as also against melancholy, or fearful and troublesome sleeps or dreams;
The garden Poppy heads with seeds made into a syrup, is frequently, and to good effect used to procure rest, and sleep, in the sick and weak, and to stay catarrhs and defluxions of thin rheums from the head into the stomach and lungs, causing a continual cough, the fore-runner of a consumption;
It stays hot and choleric fluxes of the belly, women’s courses, the whites, and gonorrhæa, or running of the reins, the distillation from the head, and pains therein proceeding from heat, want of sleep, or the frenzy.
They mitigate the pains that arise from heat, assuage inflammations, procure rest and sleep, stay both whites and reds in women, the gonorrhea, or running of the reins, and fluxes of the belly:
The milk or cream of these kernels being drawn forth with some Vervain water and applied to the forehead and temples, doth much help to procure rest and sleep to sick persons wanting it.