754

ELEMENTS OF MATERIA MEDICA.

Composition. —This pepper was analyzed by Dulong in 1825de Pharm. t. xi. p. 52). The following are the substances he obtain^from it :—Acrid fatty matter (resin ?), volatile oil, piperin, nitrogen 0118extractive, gum,, bassorin, starch, malates and other salts.

The volatile oil of long pepper is colourless, and has a disagreeable odour and 3°acrid taste.

Physiological Effects and Uses. —The effects of long pepperanalogous to those of black pepper. Cullen {Mat. Med. vol. ii. p-and Bergius {Mat. Med. Ed. 2 nda , tom. i. p. 29) consider it less po"’ arl'ul; but most other pharmacologists are agreed on its being more acn| •Medicinally it may be employed in similar cases. It is used princip a { -jfor culinary purposes. It is a constituent of several pharmacopeiapreparations.

Piper Cube'ba, Linn. L. E.D. — The Cubeb Pepper.

Sex. Syst. Diandria, Trigynia.

(Baccaj; cubebae, L. Fruit, E. Fructus, D.)

History.— It is uncertain when the cubebs of our shops were ^introduced into medicine, or who first alludes to them. There does 11 ^appear to be any foundation for the opinion that the ancient Greeks " eacquainted with them. “ Many, indeed, pretend that the Cctrp e8t g ,[Kapirriiriov) of Galen is our cubeb, and that the round pepper of Thplirastus, the pepper of Hippocrates , were all names for them ; hutis a conjecture founded on a very bad basis. The Arabians are at 0 fhead of these blunders. Serapion has translated all that Galen sa ) S j t)carpesion into his chapter of cubeb, and attributed all its virtues to ^and has even added every thing to the account that Dioscorides has ^us of the Ruscus. Avicenna is also in the same error, and calls the c ‘ spesium cubeb ; and from these authors Actuarius and the other ^ re ^ehave collected their accounts. It is plain from all this, that eithercarpesium of the Greeks and the cubebs of the Arabians are thethings, or else that the Arabians have been guilty of confounding ^ferent things in a strange manner together: if the latter be the L ’ athere is no judging of any thing from what they say ; and if the f° r ' ^it is very evident that our cubebs are not the same with theirs—. a ^. a swith the carpesium of Galen ; for he expressly assures us that thisnot a fruit or seed, but, as he tells us, a kind of slender woody j" \resembling in smell and virtues the root of the valerian. Notln a ^ (lgmore evident than that the carpesium, therefore, was either a n b rroot, or the small twigs and branches of a climbing plant, not a T °. &small fruit. If the Arabians, therefore, were acquainted with our cll ° eJ e fat all, it appears that, not knowing what the carpesium and ruscus v ' g6they ignorantly attributed the virtues ascribed by the Greeks tomedicines to these fruits” (Hill, Hist, of the Mat. Med. p. 473). r jCubebs were in use in England 500 years ago, for, in 1305, Ed« a 0 „egranted to the corporation of London the power of levying a toll 0 jMtfarthing a pound on this article in its passage over London Bridge (Niger Scaccarii, vol. i., p. *478. Also The Chronicles of Londonp. 155).

Botany. Gen. Char .— Vide Piper nigrum.