Historical label: “Surfeits” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: overeating. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with overeating OR indigestion OR dyspepsia OR "gastric emptying". The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Too much eaten or drunk, and the sickness that follows it: a surfeit of wine, of mushrooms, or of meat generally, which Culpeper also sees corrupting the liver and breaking out on the skin.
What the entries treat
Eight claims, all with a sentence. Angelica “is a remedy for a surfeit”; Ivy, for “a surfeit by drinking of wine”, the cure being “to drink a draught of the same wine wherein a handful of Ivy leaves, being first bruised, have been boiled”; Balm with a little nitre “against the surfeit of mushrooms” and Onions baked under the embers “against a surfeit of mushrooms”; Liverwort for “such whose livers are corrupted by surfeits, which cause their bodies to break out”; Poppy-flower water “against surfeits, being drank evening and morning”; Broom “helps surfeit”; Wormwood “helps surfeits, or swellings in the belly”.
Where the word comes from
Anglo-Norman surfet, Old French sorfait, the past participle of surfaire “to augment, exaggerate, exceed”, sur- “over” + faire “to do”. The sense “A sickness or condition caused by overindulgence” is on record in Bunyan (1678); “Overindulgence in either food or drink; overeating” in Shakespeare (c. 1596–1598, “the sick hour that his surfeit made”).
Today’s words
overeating; overindulgence; indigestion after excess; hangover (for the “surfeit by drinking of wine”); mushroom poisoning (for the “surfeit of mushrooms”) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
“Surfeit” survives as a bookish word for an excess; the sickness it named has no single modern name. The wine surfeit is a hangover, and Ivy’s cure for it is more of the same wine. Whether a “surfeit of mushrooms” was poisoning or plain overeating the two sentences do not say (our reading is that the one word covered both). Liverwort’s liver “corrupted by surfeits” is humoral.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “surfeit” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Middle English surfeite, Anglo-Norman surfet, Old French sorfait, past participle of surfaire “to augment, exaggerate, exceed”, sur- “over” + faire “to do”; senses “Overindulgence in either food or drink; overeating” (Shakespeare c. 1596–1598, “Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made”) and “A sickness or condition caused by overindulgence” (Bunyan 1678).
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.
8 claims: 8 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
it also helps surfeit, and alters the fit of agues, if three or four ounces thereof, with as much of the water of the lesser Centaury, and a little sugar put therein, be taken a little before the fit comes, and the party be laid down to sweat in his bed.
for if one hath got a surfeit by drinking of wine, his speediest cure is to drink a draught of the same wine wherein a handful of Ivy leaves, being first bruised, have been boiled.
LiverwortMarchantia polymorphaCLM-0017621850 index
it is a singular remedy to stay the spreading of tetters, ringworms, and other fretting and running sores and scabs, and is an excellent remedy for such whose livers are corrupted by surfeits, which cause their bodies to break out, for it fortifies the liver exceedingly, and makes it impregnable.