Read Ebook: Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the Hawk 1859 by Feild Edward

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 88 lines and 20670 words, and 2 pages

AROIDEAE 676 Rhizoma Calami aromatici 676

LILIACEAE 679 Alo? 679 Bulbus Scillae 690

SMILACEAE 703 Radix Sarsaparillae 703 Tuber Chinae 712

GRAMINEAE 714 Saccharum 714 Hordeum decorticatum 722 Oleum Andropogonis 725 Rhizoma Graminis 729

FILICES 733 Rhizoma Filicis 733

LICHENES 737 Lichen islandicus 737

FUNGI 740 Secale cornutum 740

ALGAE 747 Chondrus crispus 747 Fucus amylaceus 749

INDEX 769

PHARMACOGRAPHIA.

RANUNCULACEAE.

An organic acid accompanying helleborin was regarded by Bastick as probably aconitic acid. There is no tannin in hellebore.

The roots with which it is chiefly liable to be confounded are the following:--

RHIZOMA COPTIDIS.

It is found in the Indian bazaars in neat little open-work bags formed of narrow strips of rattan, each containing about half an ounce. We have once seen it in bulk in the London market.

Teeta is the Hindustani t??t?, from the Sanskrit tikta, "bitter."

The medullary rays contain small starch granules, while the bark, as well as the pith, are richer in albuminous or mucilaginous matters.

SEMEN STAPHISAGRIAE.

It is a native of Italy, Greece, the Greek Islands and Asia Minor, growing in waste and shady places; it is now also found throughout the greater part of the Mediterranean regions and in the Canary Islands, but whether in all instances truly indigenous is questionable. It is cultivated to some extent in Puglia, very little now near Montpellier.

Puschmann's edition i. 450.

Lib. xxiii. c. 13.

The seeds have a bitter taste and occasion a tingling sensation when chewed. Ten of them weigh about 6 grains.

The outer layer of the testa is made up of thin-walled narrow cells, which become larger near the edges of the seed and in the superficial wrinkles. They contain a small number of minute starch granules and are not altered on addition of a salt of iron. The interior layer exhibits a single row of small, densely packed cells. The albumen is composed of the usual tissue loaded with granules of albuminoid matter and drops of fatty oil.

Couerbe in 1833 pointed out the presence in stavesacre of a second alkaloid separable from delphinine by ether in which it is insoluble.

The platinic compound is in fine microscopic crystals.

The drug air-dry contains 8 per cent. of hygroscopic water. Dried at 100? C. and incinerated it left 8?7 per cent. of ash.

It is of frequent occurrence throughout the chain of the Alps up to more than 6500 feet, the Pyrenees, the mountains of Germany and Austria, and is also found in Denmark and Sweden. It has become naturalized in a few spots in the west of England and in South Wales. Eastward it grows throughout the whole of Siberia, extending to the mountain ranges of the Pacific coast of North America. It occurs in company with other species on the Himalaya at 10,000 to 16,000 feet above the sea-level.

The plant is cultivated for medicinal use, and also for ornament. The Abb? Armand David saw in northern Sz-chuen fields planted with Aconite .

St?rck of Vienna introduced aconite into regular practice about the year 1762; the root and the herb occur in the German pharmaceutical tariff of the seventeenth century.

Pliny, lib. xxvii. c. 76, also xxv. 25.

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 1/2 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 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.

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.

and pseudaconitine breaks up in accordance with the equation:

Their microscopic structure is figured in the paper of Dr. Dunin 217-225.

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

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 green with iron. When dried they yield on incineration 16?6 per cent. of ash.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet