GALBANUM (Heb. Helben¢h; Gr. xaXfiavrl)  , a gum-resin, the product of Ferula galbanitlua, indigenous to Persia, and perhapsalso of other umbelliferous plants . It occurs usually in hard or soft, irregular, more or less translucent and shining lumps, or occasionally in separate tears, of a light-brown, yellowish or greenish-yellow colour, and has a disagreeable, bitter taste, a peculiar, somewhat musky odour, and a specific gravity of 1.212 . It contains about 8% of terpene; about 65% of a resin which contains sulphur; about 2o% of gum; and a very small quantity of the colourless crystalline substance umbelliferone, C9H6O3 . Galbanum is one of the oldest of drugs . In Exodus XXX . 34 it is mentioned as a sweet spice, to be used in the making of a perfume for the tabernacle . Hippocrates employed it in medicine, and Pliny (Nat . Hist. xxiv . 13) ascribes to it extra-ordinary curative powers, concluding his account of it with the assertion that " the very touch of it mixed with oil of spondylium is sufficient to kill a serpent." The drug is occasionally given in modern medicine, in doses of from five to fifteen grains . It has the actions common to substances containing a resin and a volatile oil . Its use in medicine is, however, obsolescent .