| Summary: | <b>Background:</b> Plant-based remedies have been used since antiquity to treat menstrual-related diseases (MD). From the late nineteenth to the early to mid-twentieth century, Italian folk remedies to treat “women’s diseases” were documented in a vast <i>corpus</i> of literature sources. <b>Aim:</b> The purpose of this paper is to bring to light the plant-based treatments utilized by Italian folk medicine to heal clinical manifestations of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea and menstrual disorders in an attempt to discuss these remedies from a modern pharmacological point of view. Moreover, we compare the medical applications described by Hippocrates with those utilized by Italian folk medicine to check if they result from a sort of continuity of use by over two thousand years. <b>Results:</b> Out of the 54 plants employed in Italian folk medicine, 25 (46.3%) were already documented in the <i>pharmacopoeia</i> of the <i>Corpus Hippocraticum</i> for treating MD. Subsequently, a detailed search of scientific data banks such as Medline and Scopus was undertaken to uncover recent results concerning bioactivities of the plant extracts to treat MD. About 26% of the plants used by Italian folk medicine, nowadays, have undergone human trials to assess their actual efficacy. At the same time, about 41% of these herbal remedies come back to in different countries. <b>Conclusions:</b> Active principles extracted from plants used by Italian folk healers could be a promising source of knowledge and represent strength candidates for future drug discovery for the management of MD.
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