or Ladanum, in the materia medica, a resinous juice, which exudes from a tree of the cistus kind. It is said to have been formerly collected from the beards of goats who browsed the leaves of the cistus: at present, a kind of rake, with several straps or thongs of skins fixed to it, is drawn lightly over the shrub, so as to take up the unctuous juice, which is afterwards scraped off with knives. It is rarely met with pure, even in the places which produce it; the dust, blown upon the plant by the wind, mingling with the tenacious juice: the inhabitants are also said to mix with it a certain black sand. In the shops two sorts are met with. The best (which is very rare) is in dark-coloured almost black masses, of the consistence of a soft plaster, which grows still softer upon being handled; of a very agreeable smell, and of a light pungent bitterish taste. The other sort is Labdanum harder, not so dark coloured, in long rolls coiled up: this is of a much weaker smell than the first, and has a large admixture of a fine sand, which in the ladanum, examined by the French academy, made up three-fourths of the mass.

In medicine it is used externally, to attenuate and discus tumors; internally, it is more rarely used, but is greatly extolled by some against catarrhs and indigestions. Rectified spirit of wine almost entirely dissolves pure ladanum, leaving only a small portion of gummy matter which has no taste or smell: and hence this resin may be thus excellently purified for internal purposes. It is an useful ingredient in the stomachic-plaster, which is now indeed styled the emplectum ladanum.