Historical label: “Menses, (to provoke)” in the 1850 edition’s “A List of the Principal Diseases”. Shown as “Menses (to provoke)”.
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
To bring on a woman’s periods when they have stopped or are late: the index’s heading for what the entries call provoking the courses or the terms. No sentence is quoted under it.
What the entries treat
2 claims: 0 with a sentence, 2 from the index alone. Bdellium (index pp. 271, 258, 269) is a name the book has no herbal entry for; Wind Marjoram (pp. 281, 274) has an entry, but no sentence in it names the menses: its sentence quoted under Jaundice has it provoke urine and the terms in women, which is the same thing in the book’s own word. Menses is the index’s Latin; the entries say women’s courses, or the terms.
Where the word comes from
Latin menses, plural of mensis “month”: the months, for the monthly flow. The book’s own words are older English: “terms”, archaic for “a menstrual period” (Pepys, 1660: “the absence of her terms for seven weeks”), and “courses”, obsolete and euphemistic for the same. The remedy word, emmenagogue, is Greek émmēna “menses” + agōgós “leading”.
Today’s words
amenorrhoea (absent periods); delayed or scanty periods; emmenagogue (said of the plant) — the modern term names the same thing.
How it reads today
Medicine calls absent periods amenorrhoea and sorts them by cause, which the heading does not do. “Emmenagogue” is still the herbal word for a plant said to bring the flow on. The reader’s word today is “period”; the book’s are “courses” and “terms”.
References
Wiktionary, s.v. “menses” (accessed 2026-10-28): Latin, plural of mēnsis “month”, “the approximately month-long span of the menstrual cycle”; sense “The discharge of blood and cellular tissue that flows from the inner lining of the uterus … a menstrual flow”. Wiktionary, s.v. “term” (accessed 2026-10-28): noun sense 12, “(archaic) A menstrual period”, quotation 1660 Samuel Pepys, Diary, “My wife, after the absence of her terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child”. Wiktionary, s.v. “course” (accessed 2026-10-28): noun sense 4, “(in the plural, courses, obsolete, euphemistic) Menses”. Wiktionary, s.v. “emmenagogue” (accessed 2026-10-28): from Ancient Greek ἔμμηνα “menses” + ἀγωγός “leading”; “(medicine) An herb that stimulates blood flow in the pelvic area and uterus, causing menstruation”.
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.
2 claims: 0 with a sentence, 2 from the index alone