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.
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