Mentha piperita - Peppermint
"CONSTITUENTS: Volatile oil, resin, tannin, gum.
PREPARATIONS: Aqua Menthae Piperitae, Peppermint Water. Dose: ad libitum. Oleum Menthae Piperitae, Oil of Peppermint. This is a volatile oil prepared from the fresh herb by distillation with steam—a greenish-yellow liquid, having a pungent odor and taste. Dose: from one to fifteen minims.
Therapy: In fevers of an inflammatory character caused by exposure to cold and damp, with nausea and vomiting, a warm infusion of peppermint may be given to produce perspiration and promote a cure, as it is a very efficient diaphoretic.
The oil of peppermint, on account of the menthol present in it, is a local anesthetics, and may be employed to relieve local pain, as in the inflamed joints of rheumatism, as a spray in painful inflammation of the throat and fauces, and in any painful condition where a direct application of the anesthetic can be made....
In the pain of acute indigestion, and in painful diarrhea and dysentery, while peppermint will prove a valuable analgesic it is more important to the safety of the patient to empty the stomach with an emetic of the compound powder of lobelia, or move the bowels with a cathartic of sulphate of soda; when the cause is removed the pain and danger will pass away...."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)