USES. Both these spices are used in medicine. The roots of pimpinella have a grateful, warm, very pungent taste, which is entirely extracted by rectified spirit: in distillation the menstruum arises, leaving all that it had taken up from the root united into a pungent aromatic resin. This root promises, from its sensible qualities, to be a medicine of considerable utility, though little regarded in common practice: the only officinal composition in which it is an ingredient is the pulvis ari compositus. Stahl, Hoffman, and other German physicians, are extremely fond of it; and recommend it as an excellent stomachic, resolvent, detergent, diuretic, diaphoretic, and alexipharmac. They frequently gave it, and not without success, in scorbutic and cutaneous disorders, foulness of the blood and juices, tumours and obstructions of the glands, and diseases proceeding from a deficiency of the fluid secretions in general. Boerhaave directs the use of this medicine in asthmatic and hydropic cases, where the strongest resolvents are indicated: the form he prefers is a watery infusion; but the spirituous tincture possesses the virtues of the root in much greater perfection.
Aniseeds have an aromatic smell, and a pleasant warm taste, accompanied with a degree of sweetness. Water extracts very little of their flavour, rectified spirit the whole.
These seeds are in the number of the four greater hot feeds: their principal use is in cold flatulent disorders, where tenacious phlegm abounds, and in the gripes to which young children are subject. Frederic Hoffman strongly recommends them in weakness of the stomach, diarrhoeas, and for strengthening the tone of the viscera in general; and thinks they well deserve the appellation given them by Helmont, intesti-
Pin.
Pindar. norum solamen. The smaller kind of aniseeds brought from Spain are preferred.