Dried ginger is a traditional pungent spice used worldwide to flavor breads, sauces, curry dishes, confections, pickles, and ginger ale.

Ginger is used medically to help expel gas from the intestines and treat nausea from morning sickness, upset stomach, seasickness, and motion sickness. It is also used to help reduce fevers and lessen the symptoms of colds.

The 1997 Commission E on Phytotherapy and Herbal Substances of the German Federal Institute for Drugs recommends Ginger root for 'Dyspepsia, prevention of motion sickness.'

'Contraindications: With gallstones, only to be used after consultation with a physician.'

'Daily dosage: 2 - 4 g rhizome; equivalent preparations. Mode of Administration: Chopped or comminuted rhizome and dry extracts for teas, other galenical preparations for internal use.'

'Actions: Antiemetic; Positively inotropic; Promoting secretion of saliva and gastric juices; Cholagogue. In animals: antispasmodic. In humans: increase in tonus and peristalsis in intestines.'

Ginger's ability to prevent vomiting has been verified by clinical trial, and it has been shown to stimulate the intestines and promote production of saliva, digestive juices, and fat-processing bile. It also tends to boost the pumping action of the heart.

Grieve's classic 'A Modern Herbal': 'Stimulant, carminative, given in dyspepsia and flatulent colic excellent to add to bitter infusions; specially valuable in alcoholic gastritis; of use for diarrhoea from relaxed bowel where there is no inflammation.'

'Ginger Tea is a hot infusion very useful for stoppage of the mensesdue to cold, externally it is a rubefacient.'

'Dosage: Infusion: ½ oz. bruised or powdered root to 1 pint boiling water is taken in 1 fluid ounce. Dose, 10 to 20 grains.'

'Preparation: Fluid extract, 10 to 20 drops. Tincture, B.P., ½ to 1 drachm. Syrup, B.P. and U.S.P., ½ to 1 drachm. Oleoresin, U.S.P., ½ grain.'

King's 1898 Dispensatory: 'Ginger is stimulant, rubefacient, errhine, and sialagogue. When chewed it occasions an increased flow of saliva, and when swallowed it acts as a stimulating tonic, stomachic, and carminative, increasing the secretion of gastric juice, exalting the excitability of the alimentary muscular system, and dispelling gases accumulated in the stomach and bowels.'

'It is eminently useful in habitual flatulency, atonic dyspepsia, hysteria, and enfeebled and relaxed habits, especially of old and gouty individuals; and is excellent to relieve nausea, pains and cramps of the stomach and bowels, and to obviate tenesmus, and especially when those conditions are due to colds, or to the ingestion of unripe or otherwise unwholesome fruit. Ginger is occasionally of value in fevers, particularly where the salivary secretions are scanty and there is pain and movement of gases within the intestines. Here, though a stimulant, it will assist in producing sedation by re-establishing secretion and relieving the distressing gastro-intestinal annoyances. Ginger, in the form of 'ginger tea,' is popular and efficient as a remedy for breaking up colds, and in relieving the pangs of disordered menstruation.'

'Dose of ginger, in powder, from 10 to 30 grains; of the infusion, prepared by adding 1 ounce of the powdered or bruised root to a pint of boiling water, 1 or 2 fluid ounces.'

American Materia Medica, 1919 (Ellingwood): 'The agent stimulates the stomach actively, producing, a pleasing sense of warmth. It overcomes flatulence and quickly relieves flatulent colic. In atonic conditions of the stomach and intestinal tract, it stimulates the structure to renewed activity and materially assists in the restoration of normal tone. It relieves pain from any cause except inflammatory action, when this remedy must be avoided.'

'In acute colds the entire train of symptoms may be aborted in a single night, by advising the patient to take a hot mustard foot bath at bedtime, while the body, prepared for bed, is wrapped in warm blankets. During the foot bath the patient should drink a glass or two of hot water, each of which contains half of a dram of the tincture of ginger.'

'Acute inflammations may be aborted by this course. In dysmenorrhea, ovarian neuralgia and uterine pain from any cause at the menstrual epoch, this agent is reliable. If given at the beginning of an hysterical attack it will often abort the attack, and produce quiet and restful sleep.'