Historical label: “Looseness, (to stop)” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”. Shown as “Looseness (to stop)”.
Modern reading: diarrhoea. Searched in PubMed as each plant’s Latin name with diarrhea OR antidiarrheal. The counts and papers are on the Concordance page.
A note on the heading
Plain sense
Diarrhoea, which Culpeper calls a lask or a flux of the belly; “looseness” is the index’s word. The Sloe-bush sentence’s “overmuch scouring” reads as the same thing (our reading).
What the entries treat
8 claims: 7 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone. Culpeper’s word is “lask”: Beans’ husk “stays a lask”; Buck’s-horn Plantain “stops the lask of the belly and bowels”; Flea-wort seed fried “stays the flux or lask of the belly, and the corrosions that come by reason of hot choleric, or sharp and malignant humours, or by too much purging of any violent medicine, as Scammony, or the like”; Hemp seed “stays lasks and continual fluxes”; the Sloe-bush for “the lask of the belly or stomach, or the bloody flux” and “the pains of the sides, and bowels, that come by overmuch scouring”. Houseleek is for “other fluxes of humours in the bowels”, Roses with mastich “for the looseness of the humours in the body”. Clove Gilliflowers is an index name (p. 248) with no sentence naming it.
Where the word comes from
Looseness is loose + -ness, and Wiktionary gives it no bowel sense. Lask, the word in the entries, is from Old French lasche “not taut or tight, limp” by way of Middle English laske “lax, weak; of the bowels: loose”, and its noun sense is “looseness of the bowels; diarrhoea”, now, the entry says, used only of animals. Wiktionary’s quotations for it are Gerard 1597, Burton 1624 and Culpeper himself, 1652: “The Emulſion or Decoction of the Seed ſtaieth Lasks and continual Fluxes”, the Hemp sentence on this page.
Today’s words
diarrhoea; loose bowels; antidiarrhoeal (said of the plant) — a broad match: the heading covers more than this, or several modern things.
How it reads today
Diarrhoea is the nearest modern word, but the sentences say “lasks and continual fluxes” and “fluxes of humours in the bowels”, the old class of fluxes rather than one symptom, so the mapping is broad. The plants are binding ones. The heading sits beside Flux and Bloody Flux, which carry the general and the bloody kinds. Flea-wort’s sentence, with diarrhoea from “too much purging of any violent medicine”, is the one that names a cause rather than a humour.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “looseness” (accessed 2026-10-28): “From loose + -ness”; senses the physical, the lax and the licentious, no bowel sense. Wiktionary, s.v. “lask” (accessed 2026-10-28): noun from Middle English laske “lax, weak; of the bowels: loose”, Old French laske, lasche “not taut or tight, limp”; sense “(uncountable, chiefly veterinary medicine) Originally of both persons and animals, now only of animals: looseness of the bowels; diarrhoea”; quotations 1597 John Gerarde, 1624 Robert Burton, and 1652 Nicholas Culpeper, “The Emulſion or Decoction of the Seed ſtaieth Lasks and continual Fluxes”.
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: 7 with a sentence, 1 from the index alone
The seeds fried, and taken, stays the flux or lask of the belly, and the corrosions that come by reason of hot choleric, or sharp and malignant humours, or by too much purging of any violent medicine, as Scammony, or the like.
The emulsion or decoction of the seed stays lasks and continual fluxes, eases the cholic, and allays the troublesome humours in the bowels, and stays bleeding at the mouth, nose, or other places, some of the leaves being fried with the blood of them that bleed, and so given them to eat.
the lask of the belly or stomach, or the bloody flux, the too much abounding of women’s courses, and helps to ease the pains of the sides, and bowels, that come by overmuch scouring, to drink the decoction of the bark of the roots, or more usually the decoction of the berries, either fresh or dried.