181.  Arum maculatum.  Biting arum.  Fresh Root.  L. E.—­This root is a powerful stimulant and attenuant.  It is reckoned a medicine of great efficacy in some cachectic and chlorotic cases; in weakness of the stomach occasioned by a load of viscid phlegm, and in such disorders in general as proceed from a cold sluggish indisposition of the solids and lentor of the fluids.  I have experienced great benefit from it in rheumatic pains, particularly those of the fixed kind, and which were seated deep.  In these cases I have given from ten grains to a scruple of the fresh root twice or thrice a day, made into a bolus or emulsion with unctuous and mucilaginous substances, which cover its pungency, and prevent its making any painful impression on the tongue.  It generally excited a slight tingling sensation through the whole habit, and, when the patient was kept warm in bed, produced a copious sweat.

The only officinal preparation, in which this root was an ingredient, was a compound powder; in which form its virtues are very precarious.  Some recommend a tincture of it drawn with wine; but neither wine, water, nor spirit, extract its virtues.—­Lewis’s Mat.  Med.

182.  Asarum Europaeum, asarabacca.  The Leaves.  L. E. D.—­Both the roots and leaves have a nauseous, bitter, acrimonious, hot taste; their smell is strong, and not very disagreeable.  Given in substance from half a dram to a dram, they evacuate powerfully both upwards and downwards.  It is said that tinctures made in spirituous menstrua possess both the emetic and cathartic virtues of the plant:  that the extract obtained by inspissating these tinctures acts only by vomit, and with great mildness:  that an infusion in water proves cathartic, rarely emetic:  that aqueous decoctions made by long boiling, and the watery extract, have no purgative or emetic quality, but prove notable diaphoretics, diuretics, and emmenagogues.

Its principal use at present is as a sternutatory.  The root of asarum is perhaps the strongest of all the vegetable errhines, white hellebore itself not excepted.  Snuffed up the nose, in the quantity of a grain or two, it occasions a large evacuation of mucus, and raises a plentiful spitting.  The leaves are considerably milder, and may be used to the quantity of three, four, or five grains.  Geoffroy relates, that after snuffing up a dose of this errhine at night, he has frequently observed the discharge from the nose to continue for three days together; and that he has known a paralysis of the mouth and tongue cured by one dose.  He recommends this medicine in stubborn disorders of the head, proceeding from viscid tenacious matter, in palsies, and in soporific distempers.  The leaves are an ingredient in the pulvis sternutatoris of the shops.