Storax

Persistent chest cough with tenacious, difficult-to-expectorate phlegm in a person who feels chilled and sluggish

Crusted, itching skin lesions such as scabies or tinea, where a warming, antiseptic resin ointment is wanted to penetrate and dry the lesion

Overview. Styrax officinale is a small tree native to the eastern Mediterranean, historically cultivated from the Levant through Italy and southern Spain. Incisions in its bark yield a fragrant, balsamic resin traditionally called storax, prized since antiquity for incense, perfumery, and medicine. In the physiomedicalist and earlier eclectic materia medica the resin was classed among the warming, stimulating balsams, used both internally as an expectorant and externally as an antiseptic dressing. Much of the storax sold commercially in the nineteenth century was, in fact, substituted or blended with resin from the related Liquidambar orientalis, a point the old texts themselves noted.

Clinical Notes. Storax resin was reached for in the older tradition when a cough had become chronic and the mucus thick and hard to clear, especially in a person whose constitution was seen as cold and relaxed rather than hot and tense.

Properties and Uses. These balsams are stimulating expectorants, scarcely employed except in minute quantities as adjuvants to less agreeable and more relaxing agents. The fluid styrax may be used in sub-acute gonorrhea and gleet, especially by incorporating half a drachm of it in four ounces of the copaiba emulsion.

Properties and Uses. Flour of sulphur, when well washed as above directed, seems to be an utterly harmless agent; and may be used internally, even in excessive quantities, with apparent impunity. It acts as a gentle laxative, securing solid stools; but especially passes to the skin, increasing invisible perspiration, and leaving the surface open and liable to contract “colds.” After a few days use, it will turn black any silver article worn about the person; and its odor may be detected on the surface.