Like other related umbelliferous plants, caraway or Carum Carvi, L., has been cultivated in Europe and Asia since antiquity and used as a kitchen spice.4) With these other umbelliferous plants, and at times confounded with the one or the other, it is frequently mentioned in ancient literature,') also in midseval medical books and in the treatises on distillation. During the beginning of the 12. century caraway was cultivated by the Arabians in Morocco6) and Spain.7) About the same time caraway was praised as a medical agent by the abbess Hildegard.8) As such it was introduced into the German medical treatises of the 12. and 13. centuries.9) In England caraway was cultivated during the 13. century and used as a kitchen spice.10)

1) Trommsdorffs Neues Journ. der Pharm. 14, H. (1827), 134.

2) Liebig's Annalen 6 (1833), 301.

3) Liebig's Annalen 32 (1839), 283.

4) See also oil of cumin on p. 169. Plinii Naturalis historiae libri. Lib. XIX, cap. 8. Condimentorum omnium stomachi fastidiis cuminum ami-cissimum.

5) Isaiah, 28:25 and 27. - Matth., 23:23. - Dioscoridis, De materia medica libri quinque. Editio Kuhn-Sprengel. 1829. Vol. 1, p. 406. - Plinii Naturalis historiae libri. Lib. XIX, 49. Editio Littre. Vol. 1, p. 736. - Palladii De re rustica. Lib. XII, p. 51. - Editio Nisard, Les agronomes latins. Paris 1877. p. 486.

6) Edrisi, Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne. Texte arabe avec une traduction, par Dozy and De Goeje. Leyden 1866. pp. 75, 97, 150.

7) Ibn-el-Baitar, Djami el-mufridat. Translated by Sontheimer. 1840. Vol. 2, p. 368. - Leclerc's translation. Vol. 3, pp. 164, 197, 198. - Ibn-al-Awam, Livre d'agriculture. Translated by Clement-Mullet. 1864. Vol. 2, pp. 242 and 244.

8) Hildegardis Abbatissae Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum crea-turarum libri novem. Editio Migne. 1855. p. 1158.

9) Pfeiffer, Zwei deutsche Arzneibiicher aus dem 12. und 13. Jahr-hundert. Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften in Wien. 1863. p. 14. (Haser, Geschichte der Medizin. 1875. Vol. 1, p. 663.)

10) Meddygon Myddfai. Published at Llandovery. 1861. pp. 158, 354.- Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England. 1876. Vol. 1, p. 631 and Vol. 2, p. 543-547.

In municipal spice ordinances, caraway is first mentioned in that of Brugge1) of 1304. It is also enumerated in that of Danzig2) of the middle of the 15. century.

Distilled oil of caraway is first mentioned in the price ordinance of Berlin of 1574, and that of Frankfurt of 1589, also in the 1589 edition of the Dispensatorium Nor/cum.