MEDICINAL PART. The resinous exudation.
    Description. -- This plant has a shrubby, arborescent stem, spinescent branchs, a very pale gray bark, and yellowish-white wood. The leaves are ternate, on short petioles; leaflets, obovate; flowers, unknown.
    History. -- The Myrrh-tree grows in Arabia, and in the regions between Abyssinia and the Red Sea. The juice flows naturally, like cherry-tree gum, upon the bark. At first it is soft and pale yellow, but by drying becomes hard, darker and redder, and forms the medicinal Gum Myrrh. It is readily powdered, and has a peculiar, agreeable, balsamic odor, and a bitter, aromatic, not unpleasant taste.
    Properties and Uses. -- It is a stimulant of the mucous tissue, and used to promote expectoration, as well as menstruation; and is highly useful in enfeebled conditions of the body excessive mucous secretion, chronic catarrh, leucorrhoea, etc. Also in laryngitis, bronchitis, humoral asthma, and other diseases of the air-tubes, accompanied with profuse secretion, but expelled with difficulty. It is valuable in suppressed menses and cases of anaemia; also as a local application to indolent sores, gangrenous ulcers, aphthous or sloughy sore throat, spongy and ulcerated condition of the gum, caries of the teeth, etc.
    Dose. -- In powder and pill, ten to thirty grains; of the tincture, from half to two teaspoonsuls.