Spec. Plant. Willd. ii. 967. CI. 12. Ord. 1. Icosandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Myrtaceoe. G. 973. Calyx five-cleft, superior. Petals five. Berry two or three-celled, many-seeded. Species 28. Myrtus Pimenta. Pimenta or Allspice-tree. Med.

Bot. 3d edit.54., 41t.l94-. Officinal. Pimenta, Lond. Myrti Pimentae Fructus, Edin.

Pimenta, Dub. Pimenta berries. Jamaica Pepper.

Syn. Poivre de Jamaique (F.), Nelkenpfeffer (G.), Jamaika pepper (Dutch), Krydd peppar (Swed.), Pimenti (I.), Pimienta (S).

This tree is a native of South America, where it is called Pumake (in the Maypure language), and of the West India islands. It grows in great plenty on the hilly parts, on the north side of the island of Jamaica; flowering in June, July, and August, and soon afterwards ripening its fruit. It is a handsome tree, rising in height about thirty feet, straight, branching, and covered with a very smooth grey bark. The leaves, which are supported on footstalks at the ends of the twigs, are elliptical, pointed, of different sizes, but the largest are five inches long, and two broad in the middle, smooth, thin, entire, shining, and of a deep-green colour. The flowers are produced in terminal bunches, or rather are trichotomous panicles : the calyx is four-cleft; the petals four, reflected, of a pale green colour, enclosing many Jonger, spreading filaments of the same colour, supporting pale-yellow, roundish anthers. The fruit is a spherical berry, crowned with the persistent calyx: when ripe, it is black, or dark purple, smooth, shining, and bilocular, with the seeds enveloped in a moist, green, pungent, aromatic pulp.1

The fruit, which is the part of this plant medicinally used,

1 Sloane, Phil. Trans, xvii. 462. 12 is gathered before it is ripe l, and exposed to the sun for many days, spread thin upon cloths. They require to be frequently turned and carefully preserved from the dews. By degrees, under this management, they become wrinkled, and change from green to a brown colour; after which they are packed in bags and hogsheads for the European market. The more fragrant and smaller they are, the better they are accounted.2

Qualities.-Pimenta has an aromatic, agreeable odour, resembling that of a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs, with the warm pungent taste of the cloves; qualities which reside chiefly in the cortical part of the dried berry. Water, alcohol, and ether extract its virtues. The watery infusion is of a brown colour, and reddens litmus. With solution of sulphate of iron it immediately strikes a deep black colour, and slowly lets fall a precipitate. Nitrate of mercury precipitates it of a yellowish-brown; acetate of lead, of a dirty green; and nitrate of silver, of a deep reddish-brown colour. It is also precipitated by infusion of yellow cinchona bark. The sulphuric and hydrochloric acids redden it, and throw down pale, rose-coloured precipitates. The nitric acid forms no precipitate, but gives the infusion a yellow hue. The alcoholic tincture is rendered milky, and slowly precipitated by water: the ethereal, when evaporated on water, deposits drops of a greenish-yellow heavy volatile oil; and leaves a pellicle of a pungent, nauseous-tasted resin, and some extractive.

Hence pimenta appears to contain a volatile oil, resin, extractive, tannin, and gallic acid.

Medical properties and uses.-Pimenta is stimulant and tonic. It is useful as an adjunct to bitters in dyspepsia, attended with much flatulence, and in arthritic and hysterical affections. The watery infusion of it, sweetened with sugar, and with the addition of a little milk, is very readily taken by children; and is an excellent cordial in malignant measles, scarlatina, confluent small-pox, and the other exanthemata, when the fever assumes the typhoid type. But the most common use of Pimenta in medicine is to cover the disagreeable taste of other remedies, or to give them warmth. The dose is from grs. v. to Эij., in powder, or in their entire state.

Officinal preparations.-Aqua Pimentae, L. E. D. Spiritus Pi-mentce, L. E. D. Oleum Pimentae, L. E. D. Pilula Opiata, E. Syrupus Rhamni, L.

l When the berries ripen, they lose much of the aromatic warmth for which they are esteemed, and acquire a taste similar to that of juniper-berries. 2 Sloane, 1. c.