Historical label: “Spring Medicine” 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
A plant eaten in spring to clear the body of the phlegm, the cold and moist humour, that winter is thought to have left behind, and to turn the blood with the season. Humoral physiology throughout.
What the entries treat
Two claims, both with a sentence. Nettle-tops “eaten in the Spring consume the phlegmatic superfluities in the body of man, that the coldness and moistness of Winter hath left behind”; Our Lady’s Thistle, the tender plant boiled in Spring (“but cut off the prickles, unless you have a mind to choak yourself”), “will change your blood as the season changes, and that is the way to be safe”.
Today’s words
(none; search aids only) spring tonic; spring greens; detox; nettles — no modern condition corresponds; the words are search aids only.
How it reads today
No modern condition answers to “phlegmatic superfluities” left by winter, and no modern treatment class to turning the blood with the season; the idea survives in the “spring tonic” and “detox”. Phlegm, in these sentences, is one of the four humours, cold and moist, not the mucus of a cough. The spring “diet-drinks” sit under Blood (to cleanse), CND-0015.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “phlegm” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Ancient Greek φλέγμα, glossed “flame; inflammation; clammy humor in the body”; sense “(historical) One of the four humors making up the body in ancient and mediaeval medicine”, “said to be cold and moist”, “often identified with mucus” (from 13th c.).
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: 2 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
then you may know as well the reason why Nettle-tops eaten in the Spring consume the phlegmatic superfluities in the body of man, that the coldness and moistness of Winter hath left behind.
and in Spring, if you please to boil the tender plant (but cut off the prickles, unless you have a mind to choak yourself) it will change your blood as the season changes, and that is the way to be safe.