LAUIIUS NOBILIS, the true (Cresar's) laurel, or sweet bay, Medical properties of. Of this tree or large shrub, the berries only are officinal in this country, the leaves and berries on the Continent. Both contain a volatile oil ; the berries also a fixed or expressed oil, called laurel fat or oil of bays. The berries analysed by Bonastre yielded : volatile oil, 0'8; laurin, 1'0 ; fixed oil, 12'8 ; wax (stearin), 7'1 ; resin, F6 ; uncrystallisable sugar, 0•4 ; gummy extractive, 17'2 ; bassorin, ; starch, 25i1; woody fibre, 18'8 ; soluble albumen, traces only ; an acid, ; water, 6.4 ; salts, 1'5; ashes, 1'2. The volatile oil can be procured from the leaves or berries by distillation. It consists of two distinct isomeric oils, separable by re-distillation. Laurin is a true camphor, similar to that obtained from other Laurineac. It may be extracted by rectified alcohol.
The fixed oil may be obtained from eithersthe fresh or dried berries; the utter require to be macerated or exposed to steam previous to being pressed. The most remarkable point in regard to this oil is, the
part of the fruit in which it is lodged, viz. :—the endocarp, most fixed oils being in the seed, but this fruit, the olive, and a few others, have It in the endocarp.
The bruised leaves, and theberries, are tonic, carminative, and febri fugal ; but they are little used in medicine. The fixed oil is in exten sive use in veterinary medicine.
It is important to remark that the use of bay leaves, in cookery, to flavour puddings, cheese-cakes, custards, &c., has led in several instances to serious mistakes. fn many cases the leaves of cherry laurel, which contain a volatile 'poisonous oil, and the elements of prussic acid, are used by cooks as recklessly as got the name simply of laurel, instead of cherry-laurel. Even sculptors have encircled the brows of their marble heroes with the wrong leaf.