Pippali.

Kand.

Krishnά.

Vern. Pipul Beng. Pipal Hind.

The dried catkins and the root of Piper longum are used in medicine. They are considered heating, stimulant, carminative, alterative, laxative and useful in cough, hoarseness, asthma, dyspepsia, paralysis, etc. Old long pepper is said to be more efficacious than the fresh article. In the form of trikatu or the three acrids (see Piper nigrum), it is much used as an aromatic adjunct in compound prescriptions. Powdered long pepper, administered with honey, is said to relieve cough, asthma, hoarseness, hiccup and sleeplessness.2 A mixture of long pepper, long pepper root, black pepper and ginger in equal parts, is prescribed by several writers as a useful combination for catarrh and hoarseness.3

As an alterative tonic, long pepper is recommended for use in a peculiar manner. An infusion of three long peppers is to be taken with honey on the first day, then for ten successive days the dose is to be increased by three peppers every day, so that on the tenth day the patient will take thirty at one dose. Then the dose is to be gradually reduced by three daily and finally the medicine is to be omitted. Thus administered it is said to act as a valuable alterative tonic in paraplegia, chronic cough, enlargements of the spleen and other abdominal viscera, etc.4

Long pepper and black pepper enter into the composition of several irritating snuffs. The following is an example. Take of black pepper, long pepper, seeds of Moving a pterygosperma [sveta maricha) and ginger equal parts; powder the ingredients and rub them together with the juice of the root of Agati grandiflora (vaka). This preparation is used as a snuff in coma and drowsiness.

Ashtahatvara taila.l Take of ginger and long pepper each sixteen tolas, mustard oil four seers, butter-milk thirty-two seers, curdled milk four seers and boil them together in the usual way. This oil is rubbed externally in sciatica and paraplegia.