Printed in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases” as “—— (to whiten)” under “Teeth, (to draw without pain)” (the dash stands for the heading above it, or its first word); shown here as “Teeth (to whiten)”.
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
Whitening stained teeth by rubbing them with ash: a cosmetic, not a disease. Tobacco’s ashes make the same claim under Tooth-ache, “make the teeth white”.
What the entries treat
One claim, one sentence. The ashes of the Vine’s burnt branches “will make teeth that are as black as a coal, to be as white as snow, if you but every morning rub them with it”.
Today’s words
tooth whitening; stained teeth; tooth powder — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Reads as it did. Tooth whitening is a cosmetic trade now; the 1653 method is ash rubbed on every morning.
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.
1 claim: 1 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
The VineVitis viniferaCLM-0024391850 index, pp. 246, 397
The ashes of the burnt branches will make teeth that are as black as a coal, to be as white as snow, if you but every morning rub them with it.