Microscopic Structure-Most of the roots fail to display any characteristic structure by reason of the heat to which they have been subjected. A living root sent to us from the Botanical Garden of Edin-. burgh exhibited the thin brownish layer which encloses the central part in A. Napellus, replaced by a zone of stone cells, a feature discernible in the imported root.

Chemical Composition - According to Wright and Luff (see previous article) the roots of Aconitum ferox contain comparatively large quantities of pseudaconitine with a little aconitine and an alkaloid, apparently non-crystalline, which would appear not to agree with the analogous body from A. Napellus.

Uses The drug has been imported and used as a source of aconitine. It is commonly believed to be much more potent than the aconite root of Europe.

Botanical Origin-Aconitum heterophyllum Wallich, a plant of 1 to 3 feet high with a raceme of large flowers of a dull yellow veined with purple, or altogether blue, and reniform or cordate, obscurely 5-lobed, radical leaves. It grows at elevations of 8000 to 13,000 feet in the temperate regions of the Western Himalaya, as in Simla, Kumaon and Kashmir.

2

History We have not met with any ancient account of this drug, which however is stated by O'Shaughnessy to have been long celebrated in Indian medicine as a tonic and aphrodisiac. It has recently attracted some attention on account of its powers as an antiperiodic in fevers, and has been extensively prescribed by European physicians in India.

Description-The tuberous roots of A. heterophyllum are ovoid, oblong, and downward-tapering or obconical; they vary in length from to 1 inches and in diameter from to of an inch, and weigh from 5 to 45 grains. They are of a light ash colour, wrinkled and marked with scars of rootlets, and have scaly rudiments of leaves at the summit. Internally they are pure white and farinaceous. A transverse section shows a homogeneous tissue with 4 to 7 yellowish vascular bundles. In a longitudinal section these bundles are seen to traverse the root from the scar of the stem to the opposite pointed end, here and there giving off a rootlet. The taste of the root is simply bitter with no acridity.

ment to Pharm. of India, pp. 25-32, 265) there are several kinds of aconite root found in the Indian bazaars, some of them highly poisonous, others innocuous. The

first or poisonous aconites he groups under the head Aconitum ferox, while the second, of which there are three varieties mostly known by the Arabic name Jadvár (Persian Zadvar), he refers to undetermined species of Aconitum.

The surest and safest names in most

parts of India for the poisonous aconite roots are Bish (Arabic); Bis (Persian); Singya-bis, Mitha-zahar, Bachhnāg (Hindustani); Vasha-nāvi (Tamil); Vasa-nabhi (Malyalim).

1 Beautifully figured in Royle's Illustrations of the Botany of the Himalayan mountains, &c., 1839, tab. 13; also in Bentley and Trimen's Medicinal Plants, Part 27 (1877).

2 Bengal Dispensatory, 1842. 167.

Microscopic Structure-The tissue is formed of large angular thin-walled cells loaded with starch which is either in the form of isolated or compound granules. The vascular bundles contain numerous spiroid vessels which seen in transverse section appear arranged so as to form about four rays. The outer coat of the root is made up of about six rows of compressed, tabular cells with faintly brownish walls.

Chemical Composition-The root contains Atisine, an amorphous alkaloid of intensely bitter taste discovered by Broughton,' who assigns to it the formula CHNO, obtained from concurrent analysis of a platinum salt. The alkaloid is readily soluble in bisulphide of carbon or in benzol, also to some extent in water. It is of decidedly alkaline reaction, devoid of any acridity. Atisine has also been prepared (1877) by Dunin from the root in the laboratory of one of us. We have before us its hydroiodate, forming colourless crystallized scales, which we find to be very sparingly soluble in cold alcohol or water. At boiling temperature the hydroiodate of atisine is readily dissolved; the aqueous solution on cooling yields beautiful crystals. They agree, according to Dunin, with the formula CH N3O*. HI + OH2; this chemist has also shown atisine not to be poisonous. The absence in the drug of aconitine is proved by medical experience,3 and fully confirmed by the absence of any acridity in the root.

Uses The drug is stated to have proved a valuable remedy in intermittent and other paroxysmal fevers. In ordinary intermittents it may be given in powder in 20-grain doses. As a simple tonic the dose is 5 to 10 grains thrice a day.

Substitutes The native name Atís is applied in India to several other drugs, one of which is an inert tasteless root commonly referred to Asparagus sarmentosus L. In Kunawar the tubers of Aconitum Napellus L. are dug up and eaten as a tonic, the name atís being applied to them as well as to those of A. heterophyllum.*

RADIX CIMICIFUGE.

It

Radix Actaa racemosæ; Black Snake-root, Black Cohosh, Bugbane. Botanical Origin-Cimicifuga racemosa Elliott (Actaea racemosa L.), a perennial herb 3 to 8 feet high, abundant in rich woods in Canada and the United States, extending southward to Florida. inuch resembles Actaea spicata L., a plant widely spread over the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America, occurring also in Britain; but it differs in having an elongated raceme of 3 to 8 inches in length and dry dehiscent capsules. A. spicata has a short raceme and juicy berries, usually red.

1 Pharm Journ. vi. (1875) 189; also Blue Book, East India Chinchona Cultivation, 1877. 133.

2 Dr. M. Dunin von Wasowicz has devoted to the drug under notice an elaborate paper in the Archiv der Pharmacie, 214 (1879) 193-216, including its

structure, which he illustrates by engravings.

3 Pharm. of India, 1868. 4. 434.

Hooker and Thomson (on the authority of Munro) Flor. Ind. 1855. 58.

For figure, see Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, Part 23 (1877).

History The plant was first made known by Plukenet in 1696 as Christophoriana Canadensis racemosa. It was recommended in 1743 by Colden' and named in 1749 by Linnæus in his Materia Medica as Actea racemis longissimis. In 1823 it was introduced into medical practice in America by Garden; it began to be used in England about the year 1860.*

Description The drug consists of a very short, knotty, branching rhizome, an inch or more thick, having, in one direction, the remains. of several stout aerial stems, and in the other, numerous brittle, wiry roots, to of an inch in diameter, emitting rootlets still smaller. The rhizome is of somewhat flattened cylindrical form, distinctly marked at intervals with the scars of fallen leaves. A transverse section exhibits in the centre a horny whitish pith, round which are a number of rather coarse, irregular woody rays, and outside them a hard, thickish bark. The larger roots when broken display a thick cortical layer, the space within which contains converging wedges of open woody tissue 3 to 5 in number forming a star or cross, -a beautiful and characteristic structure easily observed with a lens. The drug is of a dark blackish brown; it has a bitter, rather acrid and astringent taste, and a heavy narcotic smell.

Microscopic Structure-The most striking character is afforded by the rootlets, which on a transverse section display a central woody column, traversed usually by 4 wide medullary rays and often enclosing a pith. The woody column is surrounded by a parenchymatous layer separated from the cortical portion by one row of densely packed small cells constituting a boundary analogous to the nucleus-sheath (Kernscheide) met with in many roots of monocotyledons, as for instance in sarsaparilla. The parenchyme of cimicifuga root contains small starch granules. The structure of the drug is, on the whole, the same as that of the closely allied European Actwa spicata L.

Chemical Composition Tilghmann' in 1834 analysed the drug, obtaining from it gum, sugar, resin, starch and tannic acid, but no peculiar principal.

Conard extracted from it a neutral crystalline substance of intensely acrid taste, soluble in dilute alcohol, chloroform, or ether, but not in benzol, oil of turpentine, or bisulphide of carbon. The composition of this body has not been ascertained. The same chemist showed the drug not to afford a volatile principle, even in its fresh state.

The American practitioners called Eclectics prepare with Black Snake-root in the same manner as they prepare podophyllin, an impure resin which they term Cimicifugin or Macrotin. The drug yields, according to Parrish, 3 per cent. of this substance, which is sold in the form of scales or as a dark brown powder.

Uses--Cimicifuga usually prescribed in the form of tincture (called Tinctura Actaw racemosa) has been employed chiefly in rheumatic affections. It is also used in dropsy, the early stages of phthisis, and in chronic bronchial disease. A strong tincture has been lately recom

Acta Soc. Reg. Scient. Upsal. 1743. 131. 2 Bentley, Pharm. Journ. ii. (1861) 460.

3 Quoted by Bentley.

4 Am. Journ. of Pharm. xliii. (1871) 151; Pharm. Journ. April 29, 1871. 866.

mended in America as an external application for reducing inflammation.1

MAGNOLIACEÆ.

CORTEX WINTERANUS.

Cortex Winteri, Cortex Magellanicus; Winter's Bark, Winter's Cinnamon; F. Ecorce de Winter; G. Wintersrinde, Magellanischer Zimmt.

Botanical Origin-Drimys Winteri Forster, a tree distributed throughout the American continent from Mexico to Cape Horn. It presents considerable variation in form and size of leaf and flower in the different countries in which it occurs, on which account it has received from botanists several distinct specific names. Hooker has reduced these species to a single type, a course in which he has been followed by Eichler in his monograph of the small order Winteraceae-In April, 1877, the tree was blossoming in the open air in the botanic garden at Dublin.

History-In 1577 Captain Drake, afterwards better known as Sir Francis Drake, having obtained from Queen Elizabeth a commission to conduct a squadron to the South Seas, set sail from Plymouth with five ships; and having abandoned two of his smaller vessels, passed into the Pacific Ocean by the Straits of Magellan in the autumn of the following year. But on the 7th September, 1578, there arose a dreadful storm, which dispersed the little fleet. Drake's ship, the Pelican, was driven southward, the Elizabeth, under the command of Captain Winter, repassed the Straits and returned to England, while the third vessel, the Marigold, was heard of no more.

Winter remained three weeks in the Straits of Magellan to recover the health of his crew, during which period, according to Clusius (the fact is not mentioned in Hakluyt's account of the voyage), he collected a certain aromatic bark, of which, having removed the acridity by steeping it in honey, he made use as a spice and medicine for scurvy during his voyage to England, where he arrived in 1579.

A specimen of this bark having been presented to Clusius, he gave it the name of Cortex Winteranus, and figured and described it in his pamphlet: "Aliquot notæ in Garcia aromatum historiam," Antverpiæ, 1582, p. 30, and also in the Libri Exoticorum, published in 1605. afterwards received a specimen with wood attached, which had been collected by the Dutch navigator Sebald de Weerdt.

Van Noort, another well-known Dutch navigator, who visited the Straits of Magellan in 1600, mentions cutting wood at Port Famine to make a boat, and that the bark of the trees was hot and biting like pepper. It is stated by Murray that he also brought the bark to Europe.

1 Yearbook of Pharmacy, 1872. 385. 2 From 8pquis, acrid, biting.

Flora Antarctica, ii. (1847) 229.

B

Martius, Flor. Bras. fasc. 38 (1864) 134. Eichler however admits five principal varieties, viz. a. Magellanica ; B. Chilensis; 7. Granatensis; d. revoluta; e. angustifolia.

But although the straits of Magellan were several times visited about this period, it is certain that no regular communication between that remote region and Europe existed either then or subsequently; and we may reasonably conclude that Winter's Bark became a drug of great rarity, and known to but few persons. It thus happened that, notwithstanding most obvious differences, the Canella alba of the West Indies, and another bark of which we shall speak further on, having been found to possess the pungency of Winter's Bark, were (owing to the scarcity of the latter) substituted for it, until at length the peculiar characters of the original drug came to be entirely forgotten.

The tree was figured by Sloane in 1693, from a specimen (still extant in the British Museum) brought from Magellan's Straits by Handisyd, a ship's surgeon, who had experienced its utility in treating scurvy.

Feuillée,' a French botanist, found the Winter's Bark-tree in Chili (1709-11), and figured it as Boigue cinnamomifera. It was, however, Forster, the botanist of Cook's second expedition round the world, who first described the tree accurately, and named it Drimys Winteri. He met with it in 1773 in Magellan's Straits, and on the eastern coasts of Tierra del Fuego, where it grows abundantly, forming an evergreen tree of 40 feet, while on the western shores it is but a shrub of 10 feet high. Specimens have been collected in these and adjacent localities by many subsequent botanists, among others by Dr. J. D. Hooker, who states that about Cape Horn the tree occurs from the sea-level to an elevation of 1000 feet.

Although the bark of Drimys was never imported as an article of trade from Magellan's Straits, it has in recent times been occasionally brought into the market from other parts of South America, where it is in very general use. Yet so little are drug dealers acquainted with it, that its true name and origin have seldom been recognized.

Description-We have examined specimens of true Winter's Bark from the Straits of Magellan, Chili, Peru, New Granada, and Mexico, and find in each the same general characters. The bark is in quills or channelled pieces, often crooked, twisted or bent backwards, generally only a few inches in length. It is most extremely thick (to 1% of an inch) and appears to have shrunk very much in drying, bark a quarter of an inch thick having sometimes rolled itself into a tube only three times as much in external diameter. Young pieces have an ashygrey suberous coat beset with lichens. In older bark, the outer coat is sometimes whitish and silvery, but more often of a dark rusty brown, which is the colour of the internal substance, as well as of the surface next the wood. The inner side of the bark is strongly characterized by very rough striæ, or, as seen under a lens, by small short and sharp longitudinal ridges, with occasional fissures indicative of great contraction of the inner layer in drying. In a piece broken or cut transversely, it is easy to perceive that the ridges in question are the ends of rays of white liber which diverge towards the circumference in radiate

1 Journ. des observations physiques, &c. iv. 1714. 10, pl. 6.

42.

2 Characteres Generum Plantarum, 1775.

3 We have seen it offered in a drug sale at one time as 66 Pepper Bark," at another as "Cinchona." Even Mutis thought it a Cinchona, and called it "Kinkina urens"!