CURCUMA ZEDOARIA — ZED GARY, 
Class I. MONANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, SCITAMINE^E. THE GINGER TRIBE. 
Fig. (a and b ) represent the flower ; (c) the root. 
This plant is a perennial, growing in sandy open places in various parts of India, particularly in Ceylon 
and Malabar; flowering during the hot season. The rhizoma is tuberous, oblong, about the thickness of a 
man’s thumb, fleshy, aromatic, and of a pale straw colour. The leaves are radical, as it is only the sheaths 
that create the appearance of a short stem ; they are broad, lanceolate, inequilateral, smooth on both sides, 
of a green colour, with a ferruginous cloud down the middle on the upper surface, and a fainter cloud in 
each side of the mid-rib below. They are bifarious and herbaceous, making their appearance with the first 
showers of April or May, and perish about the beginning of the cool season in November. The inflo- 
resence is a simple erect scape, which rises from among the leaves, and is terminated by a loosely imbricate, 
cylindrical, truncated, lateral spike of flowers. The outer limb of the corolla is straw-coloured ; the lip 
ovate, emarginate, yellow towards the apex. The filament is petal-like, 3-lobed, bearing the anther in the 
middle. The anthers are double ; the lobes separated by a deep groove, through which the style passes ; 
the lower end of each lobe ending in a large conspicuous spur, which is the essential character of the 
genus. The germen is superior and 3-celled ; style filiform; stigma somewhat bilabiate. The capsule is 
ovate, smooth, of a pale straw-colour, thin and nearly pellucid, 3-celled ; seeds several in each cell. 
The pale colour of the roots, crimson bracteas, and ferruginous mark down the centre of the leaves, 
which is a constant character in this elegant species, readily distinguish it from every other. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — The root is brought over in oblong pieces, about the 
size of the little finger ; or in roundish ones about an inch in diameter ; of an ash colour on the outside, 
and white within. They vary little in power, and are therefore used indiscriminately. Zedoary has an 
agreeable camphoraceous smell, and a bitter aromatic taste. It impregnates water with its smell, a slight 
bitterness, a considerable warmth and pungency, and a yellowish-brown colour. It imparts more bitter- 
ness, but less odour to spirit. It yields in distillation with water, a ponderous, and pungent essential oil; 
and the decoction thus deprived of the aromatic matter, and concentrated by inspissation, is disagreeably 
bitter and subacrid. 
Medical Properties and Uses. — “ This root is a very useful aromatic and stomachic. It was 
formerly much celebrated for colic, in hysteric affections, when attended by flatulency, and in scurvy and, 
as its virtues depend principally on its camphoraceous volatile oil, we see no reason for so readily discarding 
it from the materia medica, as some authors recommend. 
Dr. Ainslie informs us, that the best comes from Ceylon, where it is used as a tonic and carminative. 
It is evidently the zerumbet of Serapion, and zerumbad of Avicenna, who extols it highly : “Discutit flatus, 
cor recreat, vomitionem, compescit ad venenatarum bestiolarum morsus efficax est.” — Canon. Med. lib. ii. 
tract, ii. p. 11. The modern Arabs consider it to be tonic, de-obstruent, and aphrodisiac. Its spirituous 
extraot once made an ingredient in the cordial confection of the London Pharmacopoeia ; but an infusion is 
the form generally prescribed. 
Dose. — In substance, gr. x. to 3ss. 
CURCUMA LONGA. TURMERIC, OR INDIAN SAFFRON. 
The root of this plant, which has been admitted into the Dublin Pharmacopoeia, and is used by the dyers 
to give a yellow colour, is a native of the East Indies, China, and Cochin-China, and is very generally cul- 
tivated over the southern parts of Asia. The root, or rather rhigoma, according to Louriero, is perennial, 
creeping, fleshy, palmate, with cylindrical branches, and covered with a pale saffron coloured bark. Stem 
none. Leaves broad, lanceolate, large, quite entire, smooth, annual, pale green, densely furrowed with 
oblique slender lines; petioles long, erect, dilated at their base, minutely supporting and clasping each 
other. Scape external, three inches long. Flowers sessile, white, with a yellow nectary, one within each 
scale of the spike. 
It is brought chiefly from the East Indies ; but is common in the gardens of the Chinese ; who use it 
