Pharmacographia : A history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury.

  • Friedrich August Flückiger
Date:
1879
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacographia : A history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    slightly acid glucoside which they named Hellehoreln. It occurs only in very small pro])ortion, but is rather ]nore abundant in H. niger than in H. viridis. When boiled with a dilute acid, helleborein, C^'*H'0^', is resolved into Helleboretin, C^ff^O^ of a fine violet colour, and sugar, Q12JJ24Q12 jt ig remarkable that helleboretin has no physiological action, though helleborein is stated to be poisonous. An organic acid accompanying helleborin was regarded by Bastick as probably aconitic (equisetic) acid. There is no tannin in hellebore. Uses—Black Hellebore is reputed to be a drastic purgative. In British medicine its employment is nearly obsolete, but the drug is still imported from Germany and sold for the use of domestic animals. Adulteration—Black Hellebore root as found in the market is not always to be relied on, and without good engravings it is not easy to point out characters by which its genuineness can be made certain. In fact to ensure its recognition, some pharmacopoeias required that it should be supplied with leaves attached. The roots with which it is chiefly liable to be confounded are the following:— 1. Hellehurus Vii'idls L.—Although a careful comparison of authen- ticated specimens reveals certain small difterences between the roots and rhizomes of this species and of H. niger, there are no striking characters by which they can be discriminated. The root of H. viridis is far more bitter and acrid than that of //. niger, and it exhibits more numerous drops of fatty oil. In German trade the two drugs are sup- plied separately, both being in use ; but as H. viridis is apparently the rarer plant and its root is valued at 3 to 5 times the price of that of niger, it is not likely to be used for sophisticating the latter. 2. Actcea spicata L.—In this plant the rhizome is much thicker; the rootlets broken transversely display a cross or star, as figured in FlUckiger's Grundlagen (see p. vii.), fig. 64, p. 76. The drug has but little odour ; as it contains tannin its infusion is blackened by a persalt of iron, which is not the case with an infusion of Black Hellebore. RHIZOMA COPTIDIS. Radix Goptidis; Coptis Root, Mislmd Bitter, MisUnii Tita. Botanical Origin—Coptis Teeta Wallich, a small herbaceous plant, still but imperfectly known, indigenous to the Mishmi mountains, east- ward of Assam. It was first described in 1836 by Wallich.' History—This drug under the name of Mahmira is used in Sind for infiammation of the eyes, a circumstance which enabled Pereira^ to identify it with a substance bearing a nearly similar designation, men- tioned by the e&rly writers on medicine, and previously regarded as the root of Chelidoniuni ma jus L. Thus we find that Paulus Mgrnoia, in the 7th century was ac- quainted with a knotty root named Ma/xtpa?.^ Khazes, who according to ^ Tram, of Med. and Pkys. Soc. of Cal- cutta, viii. (1836) 85. Reprinted in Per- eira's Materia Medica, vol. ii. part 2 (1857), 699. ■'Pliarm. Jount. xi, (1852) 204; also Mat. Med. I.e. See also Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, ii. (185.5) 419.
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