Historical label: “Small Pox” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: smallpox. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with smallpox OR variola OR poxvirus OR antiviral. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
The pox of small pustules, as against the “great pox”, the venereal disease: an epidemic fever with a rash that leaves its marks. Culpeper names it with measles and the plague as one family of diseases, the aim being to “drive out” the disease; through the skin by sweating is our reading, since only Bistort’s sentence says sweating.
What the entries treat
Five claims, all with a sentence. The aim is to “drive out” the disease: Alkanet is “as gallant a remedy to drive out the small pox and measles as any is”; Bistort root in powder “expels the venom of the plague, the small-pox, measels, purples, or any other infectious disease, driving it out by sweating”; Saffron “is excellent in epidemical diseases, as pestilence, small-pox, and measles”, and Marigolds are “a little less effectual in the small-pox and measles than saffron”. Rocket with the gall of an ox “mends foul scars, black and blue spots, and the marks of the small-pox”.
Where the word comes from
Small + pox, named “in contrast to greatpox”, that is syphilis.
Today’s words
smallpox (variola); pockmarks (for the “marks of the small-pox”) — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
The same disease by the same name, and a disease that no longer exists: smallpox was caused by the variola virus, the last naturally occurring case was in 1977, and the World Health Organization certified its eradication in 1980. Survivors often had extensive scarring, which is what Rocket’s sentence is for. “Driving it out by sweating” is, in our reading, the old idea that an eruptive fever is best helped out through the skin; “purples” in Bistort’s list is glossed by Wiktionary as purpura, though which fever Culpeper meant by it the text does not say. Measles has its own headings, CND-0089 and CND-0090.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “smallpox” (accessed 2026-10-28): “From small + pox, in contrast to greatpox (‘syphilis’)”; “(pathology) An acute, highly infectious often fatal disease caused by Variola virus of the family Poxviridae”. Wikipedia, “Smallpox” (accessed 2026-10-28): “Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by the variola virus”; “The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977”; “the World Health Organization certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980”; “Often, those who survived had extensive scarring of their skin, and some were left blind.” Wiktionary, s.v. “purples” (accessed 2026-10-28): sense “(medicine) purpura”.
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
The root, in powder, taken in drink expels the venom of the plague, the small-pox, measels, purples, or any other infectious disease, driving it out by sweating.