Historical label: “Warts” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”.
Modern reading: warts. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with warts OR papillomavirus OR verruca OR HPV. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
A wart: the small hard growth on the skin, as now. Culpeper tells rough from smooth ones and lists them with “wens”, “corns”, “kernels” and “hard knots in the flesh”.
What the entries treat
13 claims: 12 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone. Every remedy is rubbed, laid or dropped on the wart. Celandine’s juice “rubbed often upon warts, will take them away”; Dog Mercury, “The leaves or the juice rubbed upon warts, takes them away”; the Fig-tree’s “milk that issues out from the leaves or branches where they are broken off, being dropped upon warts”; Buck’s Horn bruised and applied “will make them consume and waste in a short time”; Garden-Rue “boiled in wine with some pepper and nitre, and the place rubbed therewith”; the Willow Tree’s “burnt ashes of the bark being mixed with vinegar”, for “warts, corns, and superfluous flesh”; Turnsole with salt “upon warts and wens, and other kernels in the face, eye-lids, or any other part of the body”. Mullein sorts them: its juice “doth easily take them away, but doth no good to smooth warts”, being for “rough warts”. Houseleek is an index name (page 97) with no sentence.
Where the word comes from
Old English wearte; the same word as Dutch wrat and German Warze.
Today’s words
warts; verruca; common wart; plantar wart — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Reads as it did. Medicine now knows the cause, the human papillomavirus (HPV), and Wikipedia says that without treatment most kinds of wart go away by themselves in months to years. The “wens” and “kernels” in the same sentences are under Wens.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “wart” (accessed 2026-10-28): “From Middle English warte, werte, from Old English wearte”; “Cognate with Dutch wrat, German Warze”; sense 1 “(pathology) A type of deformed growth occurring on the skin caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV)”. Wikipedia, “Wart” (accessed 2026-10-28): “Warts are non-cancerous viral growths usually occurring on the hands and feet”; “caused by the human papillomavirus”; “Without treatment, most types of warts resolve in months to years”.
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.
13 claims: 12 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone
Buck’s HornPlantago coronopusCLM-0020531850 indexNot in 1652
The herbs bruised and applied to warts, will make them consume and waste in a short time.
The juice often applied to tetters, ring-worms, or other such like spreading cankers, will quickly heal them, and rubbed often upon warts, will take them away.
It cures the morphew, and takes away all sorts of warts, if boiled in wine with some pepper and nitre, and the place rubbed therewith, and with almond and honey helps the dry scabs, or any tetter or ringworm.
The juice of the leaves and flowers being laid upon rough warts, as also the powder of the dried roots rubbed on, doth easily take them away, but doth no good to smooth warts.
Dioscorides saith, That the root bruised and boiled in wine, till it be thick, and kept in a brazen vessel, and after spread as a salve, and applied to the fundament, doth heal the cleft thereof, cankers and fistulas therein, also takes away warts and wens.
the seed and juice of the leaves also being rubbed with a little salt upon warts and wens, and other kernels in the face, eye-lids, or any other part of the body, will, by often using, take them away.