Bilberry

Bilberry: what was it used for?

An astringent fruit for the bowel. Grieve gives the berries as “especially valuable in diarrhoea and dysentery, in the form of syrup,” the leaves as usable like uva-ursi, a decoction of the leaves or root bark for ulcers of the mouth and throat, and says that the ancients used them largely and “Dioscorides spoke highly of them.” Culpeper found the black bilberries good in hot agues, “to cool the heat of the liver and stomach,” to bind the belly and stay vomiting, and in syrup or conserve for an old cough or an ulcer in the lungs.

Bilberry: what does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the dried fruit as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for the symptomatic treatment of mild diarrhoea and of minor inflammations of the lining of the mouth, and a dry extract of the fresh fruit, standardised to 36 per cent anthocyanosides, for the discomfort and heaviness of legs from minor venous circulatory disturbances and the symptoms of fragile capillaries of the skin (monographs of 2015). Its assessment report finds the highest total anthocyanin content among Vaccinium species in the bilberry, 300 to 700 mg in 100 g of ripe fruit, cyanidin glycosides chief among some fifteen anthocyanins. The trials are thin. A 2004 review of placebo-controlled trials for night vision found that the four most recent randomised trials were all negative, and that the claim that bilberry anthocyanosides improve normal night vision “is not supported by evidence from rigorous clinical studies.” A 2025 meta-analysis of eleven trials found no significant effect on fasting blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, or blood pressure, and a marginal reduction in HbA1c. LiverTox, revised in 2019, finds rigorous evidence for its efficacy in any of its proposed uses lacking.

Bilberry: what did the older authorities say?

Culpeper, The Complete Herbal (1653)

Culpeper describes two English sorts, the black, whose juice “gives a purplish colour in their hands and lips that eat and handle them,” and the red bilberry or whortle-bush of the north, with box-like leaves that last the winter. Both are under the dominion of Jupiter, and “It is a pity they are used no more in physic than they are.” The red, more binding, stop women’s courses, spitting of blood, and other fluxes.