The essential oil, a simple and spirituous water, and a conserve, are kept in the shops: the Edinburgh College directs an infusion of the leaves in the distilled water. This herb is an ingredient also in the three alexitereal waters; and its essential oil in the stomach plaster and stomach pills.--Lewis's Mat. Med. 235. MENTHA Piperita. PEPPER-MINT. Herb. L. E. D.--The leaves have a more penetrating smell than any of the other mints, and a much warmer, pungent, glowing taste like pepper, sinking as it were into the tongue. The principal use of this herb is in flatulent colics, languors, and other like disorders; it seems to act as soon as taken, and extends its effects through the whole system, instantly communicating a glowing warmth. Water extracts the whole of the pungency of this herb by infusion, and elevates it in distillation. Its officinal preparations are an essential oil, and a simple and spirituous water. 236. MENTHA Pulegium. PENNYROYAL. Herb. L. E. D.--Pennyroyal is a warm pungent herb of the aromatic kind, similar to mint, but more acrid and less agreeable. It has long been held in great esteem, and not undeservedly, as an aperient and deobstruent, particularly in hysteric complaints, and suppressions of the uterine purgations. For these purposes, the distilled water is generally made use of, or, what is of equal efficacy, an infusion of the leaves. It is observable, that both water and rectified spirit extract the virtues of this herb by infusion, and likewise elevate greatest part of them in distillation.--Lewis's Mat. Med. 237. MENYANTHES trifoliata. BUCK-BEAN. Leaves. L. E. D.--This is an efficacious aperient and deobstruent; it promotes the fluid secretions, and, if liberally taken, gently loosens the belly. It has of late gained great reputation in scorbutic and scrophulous disorders; and its good effects in these cases have been warranted by experience: inveterate cutaneous diseases have been removed by an infusion of the leaves, drunk to the quantity of a pint a-day, at proper intervals, and continued some weeks. Boerhaave relates, that he was relieved of the gout by drinking the juice mixed with whey. 238. MOMORDICA Elaterium. SPIRTING CUCUMBER. Fruit L. E. D.--Elaterium is a strong cathartic, and very often operates also upwards. Two or three grains are accounted in most cases a sufficient dose. Simon Paulli relates some instances of the good effects of this purgative in dropsies: but cautions practitioners not to have recourse to it till after milder medicines have proved ineffectual; to which caution we heartily subscribe. Medicines indeed in general, which act with violence in a small dose, require the utmost skill to manage them with any tolerable degree of safety: to which may be added, that the various manners of making these kinds of preparations, as practised by different hands, must needs vary their power.