PIMENTA. MYRTUS. PIMENTA.

Pimenta berries are chiefly imported into Britain from Jamaica; whence the name Jamaica pepper. It is also called all-spice, from its taste and flavour being supposed to resemble those of many different spices mixed together. This spice, which was first exported for dietetic uses, has been long employed in the shops as a succedaneum to the more costly oriental aromatics: it is moderately warm, of an agreeable flavour, somewhat resembling that of a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmegs. Distilled with water it yields an elegant essential oil, so ponderous as to sink in the water, in taste moderately pungent, in smell and flavour approaching to the oil of cloves and nutmegs. To rectified spirit it imparts, by maceration or digestion, the whole of its virtue; in distillation it gives over very little to this menstruum, nearly all its active matter remaining concentrated in the inspissated extract. Pimenta can scarcely be considered as a medicine; it is, however, an agreeable aromatic, and, on this account, is not unfrequently employed with different drugs, requiring such a grateful adjunct. Both the Pharmacopœias direct an aqueous and spirituous distillation to be made from these berries, and the Edinburgh College order also the oleum essentiale piperis Jamaicensis.