136 ORD. VI. Umbellate. PIMPINELLA ANISUM. 
at Along with the water arises an essential oil, ag the paras of an 
ounce or more from three pounds.” 
This oil, in colour yellowish, congeals, even when the air is not 
sensibly cold, into a butyraceous white concrete. Its smell, which 
exactly resembles that of the Aniseeds, is extremely durable and 
diffusive; its taste is milder and less ei els than that of almost 
any other distilled vegetable oils.” 
« These seeds yield an oil likewise upon expression, of a ‘eréenish 
colour, in taste grateful, and strongly impregnated with the flavour 
of the seeds: sixteen ounces, lightly moistened by exposure to the 
~steam of botling water, are said to afford one ounce. This oil is 
composed of a gross insipid, inodorous onc, of the same nature with 
the common expressed oils; and a part of the essential oil of the 
seed, on which the flavour depends.”* 
The seeds of Anise, which are ranked among the four greater 
hot seeds, have been long medicinally employed by physicians as 
an aromatic and carminative, in preference to those of most of the 
other umbelliferous plants; they have also been esteemed useful 
in pulmonary complaints, and to. possess, like those of fennel, a 
power of promoting the secretion of milk. Their chief use how- 
ever is in flatulencies, and in the gripes, to which children are 
more especially liable; and they are usefully combined with such 
purgatives as are apt to produce these effects...Weakness of the 
stomach, diarrhceas, and loss of tone in the prime viz, are likewise 
complaints in which Aniseeds are supposed to be peculiarly useful ; 
and hence by V. Helmont they were called Solamen intestinorwm. 
The essential oil,* which is the only officinal preparation of. 
Aniseeds now directed by the Pharmacopceias, is usually grateful 
to the stomach, and may be taken in the dose of twenty drops. In 
diseases of the breast, the oil-is preferred, but in flatulencies and 
colics the seeds in substance are said to be more effectual.® 
* Lewis, MuM. py. 62. 
* itis sitetteiis that this oil siesit a poison to pigeons, Olexm Anisi presen 
tafeum est venenum columbis, si pance guttule ipsarum rostro instillentur & capiti- 
iufricentur, ut observavit Rup. A. Vocrr, (Hist. Mat. Med. 161) & confirmavit 
pe P. (Stralsund. Mag. p. i. p. 56.) Vide Bergius, M, -M. = 282. -* Lewis il. 
