PIPER, MEDICAL PROPERTIES OF. Pepper. According to the analysis of Pelletier, black pepper contains an acrid soft resin, a vola tile oil, piperine, extractive, gum, bassorino, malic, and tartaric acids, salts, &c. White pepper is the same fruit deprived of its outside rind.
The odour of pepper is probably due to the volatile oil, which is not acrid ; the pungent taste is most likely owing to the resin. Piperine is generally yellow, from the presence of some resin, to which it is most probably indebted fur its virtues, as when purified by means of ether from all resin, it seems devoid of power, and the febrifuge virtues ascribed to it belong in reality to the acrid resin. Pepper is much more em ployed as a grateful condiment than as a medicine, and it appears to be essential to the process of digestion in hot countries. Of 30,000,000 pounds of pepper collected, one-third only goes to Europe, the greater portion being consumed by the Chinese. Its moderate use with cold
raw vegetables or other substances difficult of digestion is to be ap proved; its employment in excess is hurtful to the liver, and a very largo dose may prove fatal, not only by exciting inflammation of tho stomach, but by an impression on the nervous system. Black pepper readily poisons hogs.
Whole pepper is a popular remedy against intermittent fevers, and impure piperine is used beneficially in like cases.
l'iper betlo and piper siriboa, besides the use of them in chewing, are also employed, in the form of the freshly expressed juice, as a febrifuge medicine, and as an antispasmodic, especially against obsti nate dry coughs.
Piper methysticum, by fermentation, yields a powerfully intoxicating drink. Mstico is yielded by a lent called Artanthe elongate, formerly considered a species of piper. 31ATico.]