The Universal Herbal: Curcuma Longa; Long-rooted Turmeric.

The Universal Herbal;
or botanical, medical and agricultural dictonary.
Containing an account of All the known Plants in the World, arranged according to the Linnean system. Specifying the uses to which they are or may be applied, whether as food, as medicine, or in the arts and manufactures.
With the best methods of propagation, and the most recent agricultural improvements.
collected from indisputable Authorities.
Adapted to the use of the farmer - the gardener - the husbandman - the botanist - the florist - and country housekeepers in general.
By Thomas Green.
Vol. I
Liverpool.
Printed at the Caxton Press by Henri Fisher.
Printer in Ordinary to His Majesty.
1824Leaves lanceo-late; lateral nerves very numerous; root perennial, creeping, fleshy, palmate, with celumnar branches, and parallel rooting rings, the skin thin and pale, the flesh saffron-coloured, with a bitterish taste, and a smell of salve; stem none; leaves broad lanceolate, large, quite entire, smooth, aunual, pale green, grooved with oblique, slender, frequent lines; flowers sessile, white, with a yellow nectary, solitary, and enclosed within the scales of the spike; corolla one-petalled, funnel shaped; tube slender, equal to the calix, widching above; seeds round, few; it has no barren filamenta. - Native of the East Indies, China, and Cochin-china. It very seldom produces seed, but was nuch used formerly in cookery, to give things a colour, for which purpose it is still used in the East, as well as for dyeing. The root of this plant had the reputation of being a powerful aperient and resolvent, being commonly prescribed in obstructions of the liver, and other chronic complaints: the disease in which it has been thought to be most efficacious, is the jaundice; it is now, however, very rarely employed in Europe: the general dose, in substance, is from a scruple to a drachm; it ſinges the urine of a deep yellow colour. It is yet in high repute in the East, where the first species being stronger, is seldom internally applied, but is used externally as a cataplasm, with the root of crinum zeylanicum, and the leaves of artemisia, and are esteemed a sovereign remedy in swellings of the abdomen, arising from a suppression of the menses. The English druggists, says Hill, keep the dried roots, which are good in the jaundice, and all obstructions, operating as a diuretic, and promoting the menses. Meyrick declares the root of turmeric to be one of the most effectual remedies known in obstructions of the viscera and mesentery, as also of the menses, strangury, and affections of the kidneys; many also, he re marks, esteem it as a specific in the jaundice; the dose in substance is from a scruple to a drachm, and three or four times as much in decoction or infusion.