and is growing out of it on one side. This second root has a bud at the top which is destined to produce the stem of the next season. It attains its maximum development at the latter part of the year, the parent root meanwhile becoming shrivelled and decayed. This form of growth is therefore analogous to that of an orchis.

The dried root is more or less conical or tapering, enlarged and knotty at the summit which is crowned with the base of the stem. It is from 2 to 3 or 4 inches long and at the top from to 1 inch thick. The tuber-like portion of the root is more slender, much shrivelled longitudinally, and beset with the prominent bases of rootlets. The drug is of a dark brown; when dry it breaks with a short fracture exhibiting a white and farinaceous, or brownish, or grey inner substance sometimes hollow in the centre. A transverse section of a sound root shows a pure white central portion (pith) which is many-sided and has at each of its projecting angles a thin fibro-vascular bundle.

In the fresh state the root of aconite has a sharp odour of radish which disappears on drying. Its taste which is at first sweetish soon becomes alarmingly acrid, accompanied with sensations of tingling and numbness.

Microscopic Structure-The tuberous root as seen in a transverse section, consists of a central part enclosed by a delicate cambial zone. The outer part of this central portion exhibits a thin brownish layer made up of a single row of cells (Kernscheide of the Germans). This is more distinctly obvious in the rootlets, which also show numerous, scattered, thick-walled cells of a yellow colour.

The fibro-vascular bundles of aconite root are devoid of true ligneous cells; its tissue is for the largest part built up of uniform parenchymatous cells loaded with starch granules.

Chemical Composition-Aconite contains chemical principles which are of great interest on account of their virulent effects on the animal economy.

The first to be mentioned is Aconitine, a highly active crystallizable alkaloid, furnishing readily crystallizable salts. It is accompanied by another active alkaloid, Pseudaconitine, which is crystallizable, but yields mostly amorphous salts. According to the admirable researches of Wright and Luff,' aconitine may be decomposed according to the following equation:

and pseudaconitine breaks up in accordance with the equation:

C36H4NO. OH2 C9H100. C27H4NO8

The decomposition of aconitine, as well as of pseudaconitine, may be performed by means of mineral acids, alkaline solutions, or also by heating the bases with water in sealed tubes. The two alkaloids, Aconine and Pseudaconine, appear to be present already in the roots of Aconitum; they, moreover, contain two other alkaloids of less

1 Pharm. Journ. 1875 to 1878, also Yearbook of Pharmacy, the results being summarized in the Yearbook for 1877, 466.

Comparative qualitative reactions of Aconitine, Aconine, Pseudaconitine, and Pseudaconine, see Yearbook (1877) 459.

physiological potency. One of them, Picraconitine, CHNO, is merely bitter, producing no lip-tingling; it gives well crystallized salts, although it is itself amorphous. Commercial aconitine is a mixture of the above alkaloids. The total yield of basic substances afforded by aconite root is not more than about 007 per cent.

The other constituents of aconite root are but imperfectly known. In the preparation of the alkaloids, a dark green mixture of resin and fat is obtained; it is much more abundant in European than in Nepal aconite (Groves). The root contains Mannite, as proved by T. and H. Smith (1850), together with cane sugar, and another sugar which reduces cupric oxide even in the cold. Tannin is absent, or is limited to the corky coat. The absence of a volatile alkaloid in the root was proved by Groves in 1866.

Uses Prescribed in the form of tincture as an anodyne liniment ; occasionally given internally in rheumatism.

Adulteration and Substitution-Aconite root, though offered in abundance in the market, is by no means always obtained of good quality. Collected in the mountainous parts of Europe by peasants occupied in the pasturing of sheep and cattle, it is often dug up without due regard to the proper season or even to the proper species,- -a carelessness not surprising when regard is had to the miserable price which the drug realizes in the market.1

One of the species not unfrequent in the Alps, of which the roots are doubtless sometimes collected, is A. Störckeanum Reichenb. In this plant the tuberous roots are developed to the number of three or four, and have an anatomical structure slightly different from that of A. Napellus. A. variegatum L., A. Cammarum Jacq., and A. paniculatum Lam. are blue-flowered species having tuberous roots resembling those of A. Napellus, but according to Schroff somewhat less active.

The yellow-flowered A. Anthora L. and A. Lycoctonum L. produce roots which cannot be confounded with those of A. Napellus L.

The root of A. japonicum Thunb. has been noticed in Europe by Christison as early as 18593; it is now imported occasionally from the East. It forms grey or almost blackish tubers from of an inch to upwards of 1 inch in length, and from too of an inch in diameter, oblong or ovoid, either tapering or rounded at their extremities. They are of plump, scarcely shrivelled appearance.*

Japanese aconite afforded to Wright and Luff a crystallized active alkaloid different from both aconitine and pseudaconitine.

Holmes states that the aromatic roots of Imperatoria Ostruthium L. have been found mixed with aconite.

1 Thus the continental druggists are able to offer it in quantity as low as 4d. to 5d. per lb., and a pound, we find, contains fully 150 roots!

2 See figure in Berg's Atlas zur pharm. Waarenkunde (1865) fig. 24.

3 Hanbury, Science Papers (1876) 258, with figure. See also Pharm. Journ. ix.

(1879) 615, where the drug is derived from Aconitum Fischeri.

Their microscopic structure is figured in the paper of Dr. Dunin (quoted farther on, in our article on Aconitum heterophyllum at p. 14) 217-225.

Pharm. Journ. vii. (1877) 749.

FOLIA ACONITI.

Herba Aconita; Aconite Leaves; F. Feuilles d'Aconit; G., Eisenhutkraut, Sturmhutkraut.

Botanical Origin-Aconitum Napellus L., see preceding article. History-Aconite herb was introduced into medicine in 1762 by Störck of Vienna; and was admitted into the London Pharmacopoeia in 1788.

Description-The plant produces a stiff, upright, herbaceous, simple stem, 3 to 4 feet high, clothed as to its upper half with spreading, dark green leaves, which are paler on their under side. The leaves are from 3 to 5 or more inches in length, nearly half consisting of the channelled petiole. The blade, which has a roundish outline, is divided down to the petiole into three principal segments, of which the lateral are subdivided into two or even three, the lowest being smaller and less regular than the others. The segments, which are trifid, are finally cut into 2 to 5 strap-shaped pointed lobes. The leaves are usually glabrous, and are deeply impressed on their upper side by veins which run with but few branchings to the tip of every lobe. The uppermost leaves are more simple than the lower, and gradually pass into the bracts of the beautiful raceme of dull-blue helmet-shaped flowers which crowns the stem.

The leaves have when bruised a herby smell; their taste is at first mawkish but afterwards persistently burning.

Chemical Composition-The leaves contain aconitine in small proportion and also aconitic acid,—the latter in combination with lime. Aconitic Acid, CH®Oʻ, discovered by Peschier in 1820 in somewhat considerable quantity in the leaves of aconite, occurs also in those of larkspur, and is identical with the Equisetic Acid of Braconnot and the Citridic Acid of Baup.' It has been stated to be present likewise in Adonis vernalis L. (Linderos, 1876,-10 per cent. of dried leaves !) and in the sugar cane (Behr, 1877).

Schoonbroodt (1867) on treating the extract with a mixture of alcohol and ether, obtained acicular crystals, which he thought were the so-called Aconella of Smith. He further found that the distillate of the plant was devoid of odour, but was acid, and had a burning taste. By saturation with an alkali he obtained from it a crystalline substance, soluble in water, and having a very acrid taste. Experiments made about the same time by Groves," a careful observer, led to opposite results. He distilled on different occasions both fresh herb and fresh roots, and obtained a neutral distillate, smelling and tasting strongly of the plant, but entirely devoid of acridity. Hence he concluded that A. Napellus contains no volatile acrid principle.

In an extract of aconite that has been long kept, the microscope reveals crystals of aconitate of calcium, as well as of sal-ammoniac. The leaves contain a small proportion of sugar, and a tannin striking

Gmelin, Chemistry, xi. (1857) 462.
Wittstein's Vierteljahresschrift, xviii.

(1869) 82, also Jahresbericht of Wiggers and Husemann (1869) 12.

Pharm. Journ. viii. (1867) 118.

green with iron. When dried they yield on incineration 166 per cent. of ash.

Uses In Britain the leaves and small shoots are only used in the fresh state, the flowering herb being purchased by the druggist in order to prepare an inspissated juice,--Extractum Aconiti. This preparation, which is considered rather uncertain in its action, is occasionally prescribed for the relief of rheumatism, inflammatory and febrile affections, neuralgia, and heart diseases.

RADIX ACONITI INDICA.

Bish, Bis or Bikh, Indian Aconite Root, Nepal Aconite..

Botanical Origin-The poisonous root known in India as Bish, Bis, or Bikh' is chiefly derived from Aconitum ferox Wallich, a plant growing 3 to 6 feet high and bearing large, dull-blue flowers, native of the temperate and sub-alpine regions of the Himalaya at an elevation of 10,000 to 14,000 feet in Garwhal, Kumaon, Nepal and Sikkim.2 In the greater part of these districts, other closely allied and equally poisonous species occur, viz. A. uncinatum L., A. luridum H. f. et Th., A. palmatum Don, and also abundantly A. Napellus L., which last, as already mentioned, grows throughout Europe as well as in Northern Asia and America. The roots of these plants are collected indiscriminately according to Hooker and Thomson under the name of Bish or Bikh.

5

History The Sanskrit name of this potent drug, Visha, signifies simply poison, and Ativisha, a name which it also bears, is equivalent to "summum venenum." Bish is mentioned by the Persian physician Alhervi in the 10th century as well as by Avicenna and many other Arabian writers on medicine,-one of whom, Isa Ben Ali, calls it the most rapid of deadly poisons, and describes the symptoms it produces with tolerable correctness."

Upon the extinction of the Arabian school of medicine this virulent drug seems to have fallen into oblivion. It is just named by Acosta (1578) as one of the ingredients of a pill which the Brahmin physicians give in fever and dysentery. There is also a very strange reference to it as "Bisch" in the Persian Pharmacopoeia of Father Ange, where it is stated that the root, though most poisonous when fresh, is perfectly innocuous when dried, and that it is imported into Persia from India, and mixed with food and condiments as a restorative! Ange was aware that it was the root of an aconite.

8

1 The Arabic name Bish or Persian Bis is stated by Moodeen Sheriff in his Supplement to the Pharmacopeia of India (p. 265) to be a more correct designation than Bikh, which seems to be a corruption of doubtful origin. We find that the Arabian writer Ibn Baytar gives the word as Bish (not Bikh).

2 Figured in Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants (1877) pt. 27.

* Flor. Ind. i. (1855) 54, 57; and Introd. Essay, 3.

+ Abu Mansur Mowafik ben Ali Alherui,

Liber Fundamentorum Pharmacologiæ, i. (Vindob. 1830) 47. Seligmann's edition.

5 Valgrisi edition, 1564, lib. ii. tract. 2. it. N. (p. 347).

61bn Baytar, Sontheimer's transl. i. (1840) 199.

7 Clusius, Exotica, 289.

8 Pharm. Persica, 1681, p. 17, 319, 358. The word bisch is correctly given in Arabic characters, so that of its identity there can be no dispute. (Pharm. persica, see appendix: Angelus.)

The poisonous properties of Bish were particularly noticed by Hamilton (late Buchanan)1 who passed several months in Nepal in 1802-3 but nothing was known of the plant until it was gathered by Wallich and a description of it as A. ferox communicated by Seringe to the Société de physique de Genève in 1822.2 Wallich himself afterwards gave a lengthened account of it in his Planta Asiatica Rariores (1830).3

Description-Balfour, who also figures A. ferox, describes the plant from a specimen that flowered in the Botanical Garden of Edinburgh as "having 2-3 fasciculated, fusiform, attenuated tubers, some of the recent ones being nearly 5 inches long, and 1 inches in circumference, dark brown externally, white within, sending off sparse, longish branching fibres."

Aconite root has of late been imported into London from India in considerable quantity, and been offered by the wholesale druggists as Nepal Aconite. It is of very uniform appearance, and seems derived from a single species, which we suppose to be A. ferox. The drug consists of simple tuberous roots of an elongated conical form, 3 to 4 inches long, and to 1 inches in greatest diameter. Very often the roots have been broken in being dug up and are wanting in the lower extremity some are nearly as broad at one end as at the other. They are mostly flattened and not quite cylindrical, often arched, much shrivelled chiefly in a longitudinal direction, and marked rather sparsely with the scars of rootlets. The aerial stem has been closely cut away, and is represented only by a few short scaly rudiments.

6

The roots are of a blackish brown, the prominent portions being often whitened by friction. In their normal state they are white and farinaceous within, but as they are dried by fire-heat and often even scorched, their interior is generally horny, translucent, and extremely compact and hard. The largest root we have met with weighed 555 grains.

8

In the Indian Bazaars, Bish is found in another form, the tuberous roots having been steeped in cow's urine to preserve them from insects. These roots which in our specimen are mostly plump and cylindrical, are flexible and moist when fresh, but become hard and brittle by keeping. They are externally of very dark colour, black and horny within, with an offensive odour resembling that of hyraceum or castor. Immersed in water, though only for a few moments, they afford a deep brown solution. Such a drug is wholly unfit for use in medicine, though not unsuitable, perhaps, for the poisoning of wild beasts, a purpose to which it is often applied in India.

1 Account of the Kingdom of Nepal, Edin. 1819, 98.

2 Musée Helvétique d'Hist. Nat. Berne, i. (1823) 160.

Yet strange to say confused the plant with A. Napellus, an Indian form of which he figured as A. ferox!

Edinb. New Phil. Journ. xlvii. (1849) 366, pl. 5.

5 The first importation was in 1869, when ten bags containing 1,000 lbs., said to be part of a much larger quantity actually in

9