Definition of "courses"

Nep [catnip] is generally used for women to procure their courses, being taken inwardly or outwardly, either alone or with other convenient herbs in a decoction to bathe them, of sit over the hot fumes thereof.

1653, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physician Enlarged, Folio, published 2007, page 201

Nicholas Culpeper similarly reports in seventeenth century that “the garden chervil doth moderately warm the stomach . . it is good to provoke urine, or expel the stone in the kidneys, to send down women's courses and to help the pleurisy and prickling of the sides.”

2008, Jack Staub, quoting Nicholas Culpeper, 75 Exceptional Herbs for Your Garden, Gibbs Smith, page 51