Historical label: “Venereal Disease” 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 disease got by sexual contact; the word means of Venus. The index gives one plant and no sentence, so what Culpeper meant under this heading is not on record.
What the entries treat
1 claim: 0 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone. Sopewort, or Bruisewort, is listed in the 1850 index (page 244) with no sentence in its entry naming the complaint. The book’s own words for the thing sit under Ulcers: Hound’s Tongue’s “foul ulcers that arise by the French pox”.
Where the word comes from
Latin venereus, venerius, “of or relating to sexual love”, from Venus, the Roman goddess of love, through Middle English venereal. Wiktionary’s earliest quotation for the disease sense is dated 1597.
Today’s words
sexually transmitted infection (STI); sexually transmitted disease (STD); syphilis (the “French pox” under Ulcers); gonorrhoea — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
“Venereal disease”, VD, is the older name for what medicine now calls sexually transmitted infections. With one index name and no sentence, the heading is a pointer, not a treatment: a reader looking for Culpeper on the subject finds more under Ulcers (the “French pox”) than here.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “venereal” (accessed 2026-10-28): “From Middle English venereal, venerealle (“of or relating to sexual intercourse”), from Latin venereus, venerius (“of or relating to sexual love”), from Venus (“Roman goddess of love”)”; sense 2 “Of a disease: sexually transmitted; of or relating to, or adapted to the cure of, a venereal disease”, quotations dated 1597, 1650, 1913, 1944 and 2008; “venereal disease” listed as a derived term.
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: 0 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone