Witnessed by: Unani

Castoreum (Castor fiber), of the Castoridae (Mammalia) family. The Eurasian beaver — a large river rodent with a flat scaled tail and dense waterproof fur, which marks its territory from paired perineal sacs; native range: the Eurasian beaver of the rivers and lakes of Europe, Russia and central Asia; the drug reached the Unani physicians of India through the Persian and Arab trade. Globally recognized as jundubādastar in Arabic, jund bedastar in Persian, jund bedastar in Urdu, castoreum, beaver musk in English, and Castoreum in Latin. The part used is the paired castor sacs, dried whole with their contained secretion. Paired pear-shaped sacs, dried to a hard wrinkled brown-black mass, the contents resinous and reddish-brown, breaking with a waxy fracture. The smell is powerful, deep, tarry-musky and animal, clinging to the fingers for hours; the taste bitter, acrid and long.

In this cross-tradition database, we analyze how this substance operates across world medicine systems — tracking its traditional tastes, temperatures, tissue affinities, post-digestive effects, and planetary correspondences across Ayurveda, Unani, and Western herbalism.

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