ee 
re 
SERULA ASAFCETIDA. ORD. VI. Umbellate. 115 
* 
course the drug loses much of its efficacy by keeping. According 
to Kaempfer’s account, the juice is infinitely more oedorate when 
recent than when in the state brought to-us: Affirmaré ausim, 
unam drachmam recens effusam, majorem spargere foetorem, quam 
centum libras vetustioris quem siccum venundant aromatarii nos- 
trates. ‘“ We have this drug in large irregular masses of a hétero- 
geneous appearance, earpeaed of various shining little lumps or 
grains, which are partly whitish, partly of a brownish or reddish, 
and partly of a violet hue. Those masses are accounted the best 
which are clear, of a pale reddish colour, and variegated with a 
great number of fine white tears. Asafcetida is composed of a 
gummy and a resinous substance, the first in largest quantity. 
Its smell and taste reside in the resin, which is readily dissolved 
and extracted by pute spirit, and, in a great part, along with the 
gummy matter, by water.‘ 
‘Asafcetida is a medicine in very general use, a is certainly a 
more efficacious remedy than any of the other fetid gums: it is 
most commonly employed in hysteria, hypochondriasis, some 
symptoms of dyspepsia, flatulent colics, and in most of those 
» diseases termed nervous: but its chief .use is derived from its 
antispasmodic effects; and it is thought to be the most powerful 
remedy we possess for those peculiar convulsive and spasmodic 
affections which often recur in the first of these diseases; both taken, 
into the stomach and in the way of enema. It is also recommended - 
as an emmenagogue, anthelminthic, expectorant,* -antiasthmatic; 
and anodyne. Where we wish it to act immediately as an antispas- 
modic, it should be used in.a fluid form, as that of tincture. - 
In the London Pharmacopeeia, a spirituous tincture of it is 
directed, and it is also an ingredient in the Pilule e Gummi. In 
the Edinburgh Pharmacopeeia, Asafeetida is ordered in,the Tinctura 
fuliginis, in the pilule gummosz, and in the form of tincture with 
‘the Spt. Sal. ammon. vinos. 
© ‘Lewis’s Mat. Med. 
2 Dr. Cullen prefers it to the Gum Ammon. as an expectorant. Asafetida 
should therefore have a double advantage in spasmodic asthmas. 
