586 . ORD. XXXV. Ascyroidee., — cistus creTicus. 
As this drug is observed to issue most copiously in the hottest 
weather, the method of gathering above described must be per- 
formed when the intensity of the sun’s heat renders it a very 
laborious and troublesome employment. 
Three sorts of Ladanum have been described by authors, but 
only two are now to be met with inthe shops. “ The best, which 
is very rare, is in dark coloured masses, of the consistence of 
a soft plaster, growing still softer on being handled: the other 
is in long rolls, coiled up, much harder than the preceding, and 
not so dark.) The first has commonly a small and the last a large 
admixture of fine sand, which in the Labdanum examined by the 
French: Academy amounted to three-fourths of the mass. It is 
scarcely: indeed to be collected pure, independently of designed 
abuses; the dust blown on the plant by winds from the loose 
sands among which it grows, being retained by the tenacious 
juice. The soft kind has an agreeable smell, and a lightly pun- 
gent bitterish taste: the hard is much weaker. Rectified spirit of 
wine dissolves nearly the whole of pure Labdanum into a golden- 
coloured: liquor: on inspissating the filtered solution, the finer 
parts of the Labdanum rise with the spirit, and the remaining 
resin proves both weaker and less agreeable than the juice at first. 
On infusing the Labdanum in water it impregnates the liquor 
considerably with its smell and taste, and in distillation with water, 
there comes over a fragrant essential oil.”* 
This resin was formerly much employed internally as a pectoral 
and astringent in catarrhal affections, dysenteries, and several 
other diseases ; at present however it is wholly confined to external 
use, and is an ingredient in the stomachic plaster, or emplastrum 
Jandani of the London Pharm. It is also sometimes used in the 
way of fumigation. 
By the ancients we are told, that the Aadav was collected by combing the 
beards and thighs of goats who browzed upon the cistus, and to whose hair the 
drug was found to adhere: another method of gathering it, was by drawing cords 
over those shrubs which produce it. See Dioscorides, Mat. Med. Lib. t. p. 128, 
and Pliny, Hist. Nat. Lib. xii. cap. «vit. 
* Lewis, M. M. p. 368, - 
yy mre 
