Long Pepper, botanically known as Piper Longum is a spice but has been used a traditional medicine since immemorial times. Old long pepper is said to be more efficacious than the fresh article. In the form of three acrids, it is much used as an aromatic adjunct in compound prescriptions.
Health Benefits of Long Pepper
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.
Dose of Long Pepper in Medicine
Powdered long pepper, administered with honey, is said to relieve cough, asthma, hoarseness, hiccup and sleeplessness. 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.
As an alterative tonic, long pepper is recommended for use in a peculiar manner. An infusion of 3 long peppers is to be taken with honey on the first day, then for 10 successive days the dose is to be increased by 3 peppers every day, so that on the tenth day the patient will take 30 at one dose. Then the dose is to be gradually reduced by 3 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.
Long pepper and black pepper enter into the composition of several irritating snuffs. The following is an example. Take black pepper, long pepper, seeds of Moringa 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.
Ashakavara Taila: Take ginger and long pepper each 16 tolas, mustard oil 4 seers, buttermilk 32 seers, curdled milk 4 seers and boil them together in the usual way. This oil is rubbed externally in sciatica and paraplegia.
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