# Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

**Bursa pastoris*; pickpocket, mother’s heart*

**Known today as.** *Capsella bursa-pastoris*, of the cabbage family, a weed of every garden, its seed-pods shaped like little heart-shaped purses.

Kind: Plant

## What was it used for?

A styptic, for bleeding of every kind: from the nose, the lungs, the womb, and wounds.

## What does modern science say?

Used to stop bleeding in the First World War, it is said, when other styptics were scarce; no trial has confirmed it.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **flavonoids**: luteolin and quercetin glycosides
- **fumaric acid**: 
- **sinigrin**: a glucosinolate
- **a peptide**: oxytocin-like in animal uterus, unidentified

**Mechanism.** The styptic reputation has some basis: extracts contract the uterus in animal preparations, and a trial in 2018 found mefenamic acid with shepherd’s purse reduced heavy menstrual bleeding more than the drug alone (Naafe, 2018); the mechanism is unsettled.

**Dose.** Safe at tea doses.

**Standing.** EMA monograph (2011) for heavy menstrual bleeding and minor skin bleeding, on tradition.

## What lore surrounds it?

Children’s game: a pod is offered to be picked, and it “breaks the heart” of the one who takes it, whence mother’s heart.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Pliny's thlaspi, the plant whose seed-capsule gives the family its old name, has narrow leaves “turned towards the ground, and divided at the point,” a slender stem “half a foot in length,” a white flower, and a seed “enclosed in a crescent-shaped capsule” that is “similar to a lentil in shape, except that it has a jagged appearance, to which, in fact, it owes its name”; it “is found near footpaths and in hedges.” The acrid seed “carries off bile and pituitous secretions,” and the gathering carries a rule: the person who gathers it “should mention that he is taking them for diseases of the groin, for abscesses of all kinds, and for wounds, and that he should pluck them with one hand only.”

**Culpeper.** Under Saturn, cold, dry, and binding: it helps all fluxes of blood, the bloody flux, spitting of blood, and bloody urine, and “being bound to the wrists of the hands, and the soles of the feet, it helps the yellow jaundice”; its country names are Shepherd’s Scrip, Pickpurse, and Casewort.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Shepherd’s Purse.”
- Gerard, J. (1597). *The Herball*.
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 27.113, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Shepherd’s Purse.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- EMA/HMPC (2011). *Community herbal monograph on Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medikus, herba* (EMA/HMPC/262766/2010).
- Naafe, M., et al. (2018). “Effect of hydroalcoholic extracts of *Capsella bursa-pastoris* on heavy menstrual bleeding: a randomized clinical trial.” *Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine* 24.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.