Printed in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases” as “—— (hard)” under “Tumours” (the dash stands for the heading above it, or its first word); shown here as “Tumours — (hard)”.
Modern reading: hard swellings. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with swelling OR tumor OR edema OR "anti-inflammatory". The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A swelling that is hard to the touch, to be softened (“mollifies”, “molify”) or dispersed (“discuss”) from outside; the king’s evil, knots and imposthumes are its company.
What the entries treat
Seven claims, all with a sentence, all also under Tumours. Archangel bruised with salt, vinegar and hog’s grease “laid upon a hard tumour or swelling, or that vulgarly called the king’s evil, do help to dissolve or discuss them”; English Tobacco’s salve “to help imposthumes, hard tumours, and other swellings by blows and falls”; the Mallows poultice with bean or barley flour and oil of roses “against all hard tumours and inflammations, or imposthumes, or swellings of the privities”; Mellilot boiled in wine “mollifies all hard tumours and inflammations that happen in the eyes, or other parts of the body”; Misselto’s birdlime “doth molify hard knots, tumours, and imposthumes”; the Elm’s root-bark decoction, fomented, “mollifies hard tumours, and the shrinking of the sinews”; Wold, on Matthiolus’s word, “dissolves hard tumours, and opens obstructions”.
hard lump; indurated swelling; swollen gland (lymph node); scrofula (the “king’s evil”); cyst — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
A hard lump today is read with the modern tumour in mind; Culpeper’s hard tumour is a hard swelling, a gland, a knot, an abscess before it gathers, and the sentences soften it with poultices. The word, and the warning about the false friend, are under CND-0142.
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.
7 claims: 7 with a sentence, 0 from the index alone
the herb also bruised, and with some salt and vinegar and hog’s-grease, laid upon a hard tumour or swelling, or that vulgarly called the king’s evil, do help to dissolve or discuss them;
A poultice made of the leaves boiled and bruised, with some bean or barley flower, and oil of Roses added, is an especial remedy against all hard tumours and inflammations, or imposthumes, or swellings of the privities, and other parts, and eases the pains of them;
Melilot, boiled in wine, and applied, mollifies all hard tumours and inflammations that happen in the eyes, or other parts of the body, and sometimes the yolk of a roasted egg, or fine flour, or poppy seed, or endive, is added unto it.