# Bistort (Bistorta officinalis)

**Bistorta**

**Known today as.** *Bistorta officinalis*, snakeweed.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Root in the oil (ch. 9).

## What does modern science say?

Rich in tannins, and long used for diarrhea and bleeding.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **tannins**: 15–20 per cent of the root, condensed and hydrolysable
- **gallic acid**: 
- **ellagic acid**: 

**Mechanism.** One of the most tannin-rich of the astringent roots: it tightens the gut lining and stops bleeding by protein precipitation, which is the whole of its action.

**Dose.** Safe in the short term; tannin loads of this size irritate the stomach and bind iron if taken for weeks.

**Standing.** No EMA monograph; in the German tradition for diarrhoea and mouth inflammation.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its young leaves are the essential ingredient of dock pudding, or Easter-ledge pudding, a Lenten dish of the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, cooked with oatmeal, nettles, and onion and traditionally fried with bacon. It survives in the World Dock Pudding Championship, held at Mytholmroyd every year since 1971.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Culpeper.** Puts it under Saturn, cold and dry, and says both leaves and roots “have a powerful faculty to resist all poison”: the root in powder, taken in drink, expels the venom of the plague, smallpox, and measles by sweating; the decoction in wine stays all inward bleeding and fluxes, and “hinders abortion or miscarriage in child-bearing.”

## Sources

- “Dock pudding” (reference article).
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Bistort, Or Snakeweed.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Wichtl, M. (2004). *Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals*, 3rd ed., “Bistortae rhizoma.”

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*Bistort.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/bistort

Historical description, not medical advice.