in the Materia Medica of the ancients, a name given by Avicenna, Serapion, and others, to a root which was like ginger, and was brought from the East Indies, and used as a provocative to venery. The interpreters of their works have supposed that our eryngium or eryngo was the root meant by it; but this does not appear to be the case on a strict inquiry, and there is some reason to believe that the famous root, at this time called gingeng, was what they meant.