A supplement to Medical botany, or, part the second : containing plates with descriptions of most of the principal medicinal plants not included in the Materia Medica of the collegiate pharmacopoeias of London and Edinburgh : accompanied with a circumstantial detail of their medicinal effects, and of the diseases in which they have been successfully employed / by William Woodville, M.D. F.L.S. physician to the small pox and inoculation hospitals.

William Woodville

Date:: 1794

Credit: A supplement to Medical botany, or, part the second : containing plates with descriptions of most of the principal medicinal plants not included in the Materia Medica of the collegiate pharmacopoeias of London and Edinburgh : accompanied with a circumstantial detail of their medicinal effects, and of the diseases in which they have been successfully employed / by William Woodville, M.D. F.L.S. physician to the small pox and inoculation hospitals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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$ROOT annual, branched, whitifh, hung with numerous fmall fibres. Stalk above a foot in height, alternately branched, formed into angles by a foliaceous membrane, fwelled at the bafe of each branch, rough, and of a dingy purple colour. Leaves on footftalks, alternate, irregularly ovate, finuated, or indentated, and clothed with loft hairs. Flowers in a fpecies of umbel, upon a common lateral flower {talk. Calyx divided into five fmall fhort permanent fegments. Corolla feparated into five fegments, which are oval, pointed, fpread- mg, and of a whitifh colour. Filaments five, fhort, downy, ter- minated by yellow oblong contiguous anthera:. Germen roundifh, fupporting a tapering downy ftyle, furnifhed with a round ftigma. Fruit a round two-celled berry, changing^ from a green to a black colour, and containing feveral kidney*-fhaped yellowifh feeds. It is common about rubbifh, dunghills, and in neglected gardens, producing its flowers during all the fumirier months. The fmell of this plant is faint and difagreeable; to the tafle it manifefts no peculiar flavour, being fimply herbaceous. It appears to poffefs the deleterious qualities of the other Nightfhades in a very considerable degree; even the odour of the plant is faid to be fo powerfully narcotic as to cauie fleep.a The berries are equally poifonous with the leaves* Three children, upon eating them, were fuddenly feized with cardialgia and delirium, accompanied with fpafms, and remarkable diftortions of the limbs :b and to poultry they proved fatal in a ihort time.c The plant, or rather the leaves which were boiled and eaten by a mother and four children, produced fwellings of the face and limbs, followed by inflammation and gangrene; but the hufband, who likewife ate of this vegetable at the fame time, found no cOnfequent diforder.d Its deleterious effects appear Mill more certain from the experiments a Heccona Mufeo dl jis. p. 284. b Vide JVepfer De ciuit. p, 226* ' c Holler. I. c. tucker* Commtrc* Noric* 1731* />• 272* of$

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