History of the vegetable drugs of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States / by John Uri Lloyd ; with portraits of Charles Rice and Joseph P. Remington.

  • John Uri Lloyd
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: History of the vegetable drugs of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States / by John Uri Lloyd ; with portraits of Charles Rice and Joseph P. Remington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ROSA GALLICA The rose, in some form of its many varieties, is indigenous to the warmer parts of Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and other countries. Its use in medicine as well as in perfumes dates from the earliest times. The Rosa gallica is said to have been introduced into France by the Count of Champagne on his return from the Crusades in 1241. In the study of attar of roses made by the writer on the bottom lands beneath Mt. Olympus in Turkey, the roses planted in rows appeared much like raspberry fields, the roses being of a rather insignificant appearance, but very fragrant. The use of the rose in confection form, in pharmacopeial medicine, once very popular, has, with the exception of its employment in blue mass (Massa hydrar- gium), become nearly obsolete. In the “Arabian Nights” (88), rose water is often referred to, and in Turkish home life it is employed as a refreshing perfume after bathing. RUBUS Blackberry, Rubus villosus, grows abundantly in most parts of the United States. The roots of the various species as well as varieties or rubus are more or less astringent and have been used in do- mestic medicine from the days of America’s first settlement. The Cherokee Indians (Rafinesque [535]), chewed the root of this plant and swallowed the saliva for a cough, probably its astringency being helpful to the throat membranes. They also used a poultice of it for piles, in which direction its mild astringency seems rationally to adapt it. A syrup of blackberry root has been a great favorite in some sections of the country as a remedy for dysentery. This use of the drug in domestic medication, in which it has always been valued in America, led finally to its employment by the members of the medical profession. The juice of the blackberry fruit, spiced and mixed with whisky, is and has ever been a valued carminative drink in Kentucky and other parts of the Southern United States, and founded the phar- macopeial blackberry cordial. SABAL Saw palmetto, Serenoa serrulata, Sabal serrulata. The berry of the saw palmetto, practically unknown in medicine before 1879, came rapidly into conspicuity, both in pharmacy and in medicine, after that date. It had been observed by the settlers of the South that ani- mals feeding on the matured fruit “grew very sleek and fat,” a fact that was ascribed to the therapeutic qualities of the berries, reasoning from which they prepared a decoction of the fruit for domestic medi- cation. In 1877, Dr. Reed, of the Southern United States, in an ar- ticle entitled “A New Remedy,” in the Medical Brief, St. Louis (417), stated that several persons in his neighborhood were using a prepara- tion of the berry, giving instances of its use in various directions. This article was reproduced in Nezv Preparations (467), July, 1879, and was followed in the same publication by another article from the Medical 7i