The description, composition, and preparations of the Sanguinaria canadensis / by George D. Gibb.

  • Gibb, Sir George Duncan, 1821-1876.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The description, composition, and preparations of the Sanguinaria canadensis / by George D. Gibb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the Pharmaceutical Journal for March, I860]. PART II. **~A ft Ai - xK/ THE DESCRIPTION, COMPOSITION, AND PREPARATIONS OF THE SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS. BY GEORGE D. GIBB, M.D., M.R.C.P., LONDON. In another place* I have been at some pains to show the value of the san- guinaria, or Canadian blood-root, in many internal diseases, of which those of the chest and throat are the most important. From the evidence which has been brought forward to prove its value in these, there is no doubt that the drug will become extensively employed in this country. The pages of the Pharmaceutical Journal have appeared to me the fittest place for a descrip- tion of the root, its composition, and of the various preparations employed medicinally. The plant belongs to the sexual system Polyandria Monogynia, and the natural order Papaveraceae. DESCRIPTION. The only officinal part of this hardy little herbaceous perennial plant is the root. The Root.—When fresh, it is from two to three and a half and four inches long, abrupt at the end, often contorted and truncated, about as thick as the finger, fleshy, round, being for the most part tolerably stout in the middle, with a curvature at each end, covered with orange fibres two or more inches long, of a reddish brown colour externally, inclining to copper, of a brighter blood-red within, and abounding in an orange-coloured juice, which escapes when it is cut. The end always has the appearance of having been cut off by a dull in- strument, or broken in removing it from the ground. Occasionally a number of roots are connected together, principally by no closer attachment than that pro- duced by a fasciculation of numerous fibres originating from the main body. When dried, it has considerably shrunken; and, as met with in commerce, is in pieces from one to three inches long, j- from a quarter to half an inch or more in thickness, flattened, heavy, much wrinkled and twisted, often furnished with abrupt offsets or knobs and many short radical fibres, externally a darker red- dish-brown colour, with a spongy, uneven fracture when broken, the surface of which is at first bright orange, deepest in the centre, but becomes of a dull brown by long exposure. * Sec British MedicalJournal, page 104. ^ AX^,^> Ss, t A few reach the length of four inches. /^kz^z-w— t^c^*