*EWYOj5fc ,2 f) FLORA MEDICA. London : Printed by A. Spottiswoode, New- Street- Square. FLORA MEDICA; A BOTANICAL ACCOUNT OF ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT PLANTS USED IN MEDICINE, IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD. JOHN LINDLEY, PH.D. F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON j VICE SECRETARY OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, ETC. ETC. ETC. Certa feram certis autoribus ; haud ego vates LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1838. PREFACE. There are probably few persons engaged in teaching Botany to medical students in this country, who have not experienced great inconvenience from the want of some work in which correct systematical descriptions of medicinal plants are to be found, and which is cheap enough to be used as a class book. By the author, at least, this has been so strongly felt, that he would long since have made the present attempt at supplying the deficiency had he been a medical man, or had he not hoped in each succeeding year that such a work would have appeared from the pen of some writer of reputation, both as a botanist and pharmacologist. This expectation has not been realised ; the necessity that students should have access to a botanical account of the plants which furnish the substances used medicinally in different parts of the world, daily becomes more urgent; and hence the work now presented to the public makes its appearance. Under existing arrangements it is chiefly from systema- tical works treating of the British Flora, that the student of Botany derives his acquaintance with species ; and as but a small number of the plants found wild in this country are either officinal, or of much medical value, he is practically excluded from any acquaintance with those important exotic species which it is most desirable for him so to study as to recognise them when he sees them. The student therefore who is really anxious to study Botany for those great purposes which render it so indispensable a branch of medical science, has been obliged to remain satisfied with such general knowledge as he can obtain v a 3 PREFACE. from books like the author's Natural System of Botany. His examination in practical Botany becomes alarming to him because he is necessarily ill-prepared to meet it ; and when passed, all but the theory of the science is too apt to quit his memory, from the want of definite points upon which his attention can be permanently fixed. But there is another reason which has induced the author to take up the investigation of medical plants. All persons at all conversant with Materia Medica, are aware how conflicting are the statements found in books, and made in conversation, respecting the sources from which medicinal plants, often of the commonest kind, are derived. For instance, one writer says that Cubebs are obtained from Sierra Leone, where Piper Cubeba does not grow : another refers the origin of this pepper, in Bourbon, to Piper caudatum, which is a Brazilian, not an African species ; a third asserts that Cubebs come from Java, and are the fruit of Piper caninum, not of P. Cubeba. Cas- carilla bark is assigned by one writer to Croton Cascarilla, by another to C. pseudo-china, and by a third to C. Eleu- teria. Rhubarb has been said by different writers to be the root of Rheum palmatum, R. undulatum, and R. Emodi ; and in all these cases the assertion has been made with equal confidence. According to one author Sarsaparilla is the root of Smilax officinalis ; to another, of Smilax me- dica ; to a third, of Smilax aspera ; to others, of a species called S. Sarsaparilla. I have even heard it stated with great confidence, that of the few kinds of vegetable drugs admitted into the last edition of the Pharmacopoeia of the College of Physicians, twelve are referred to plants which certainly do not produce them ; and that twenty-six others have been assigned to their sources with more or less in- accuracy. As the greater part of these differences of opinion can be more readily settled by Botanical investi- gation than by Pharmaceutical evidence, the author trusts that it will not be thought presumptuous in him to have made the attempt, although he is not a medical man. vi PREFACE. In executing his task he has been much embarrassed to determine within what limits to confine it. To be guided by the last edition of the London Pharmacopoeia, or by any other work of the same description, would have mani- festly been inexpedient,, because all such books are from their very nature circumscribed, and confined in their application to some particular place. To have thus limited the present work, would have entirely defeated one of the first objects set before himself by the author in the exe- cution of it — the indication of what remedial agents are employed in other countries, but not yet introduced into English practice. No one will be bold enough to assert that the physician already possesses the most powerful agents produced by the vegetable kingdom ; for every year is bringing some new plant into notice for its energy, while others are excluded because of their inertness. In tropical countries, where a fervid sun, a humid air, and a teeming soil give extraordinary energy to vegetable life, the natives of those regions often recognise the existence of potent herbs unknown to the European prac- titioner. No doubt such virtues are often as fabulous, and imaginary, as those of indigenous plants long since rejected by the sagacity of European practice. But we are not altogether to despise the experience of nations less ad- vanced in knowledge than ourselves, or to suppose because they may ascribe imaginary virtues to some of their officinal substances, as has been abundantly done by ourselves in former days, that therefore the remedial properties of their plants are not worth a serious investigation ; or that their medical knowledge is beneath our notice because they are unacquainted with the terms of modern science. It is not much above twenty years since an English officer in India was cured of gonorrhoea by his native servant, after the skill of regular European practitioners had been exhausted: the remedy employed was Cubebs, the importance of which was previously unknown, and the rationale of whose action is to this day beyond the discoverv of physiologists. It -is of undoubted value in urethral catarrh : and who shall vii a 4 PREFACE. say that there are not hundreds of equally powerful reme- dies still l-emaining to be discovered. Look to Hemi- desmus indicus, the source of Indian Sarsaparilla, the most active medicine of that name now known to the English physician, although excluded from the Pharma- copoeia ; to Chloranthus officinalis, unrivalled in Java for its aromatic properties and powerful stimulating effects ; to Soymida febrifuga, Galipea officinalis, and Cedrela Toona, which, at least, rival the Jesuit's bark in their influence over the most dangerous fevers ; to Ery throxylon Coca one of the most active stimulants of the nervous system ; or, finally) consider the accounts we have of the effects of Jamaica Dogwood, Piscidia Erythrina, which, if there is any truth in medical reports, must be a narcotic superior to opium for many purposes ; and it must be sufficiently apparent to all unprejudiced minds, that the resources of the vege- table kingdom, far from being exhausted, have hardly yet been called into existence. It is presumptuous for the theorist to assert that he already possesses a remedy " for all the maladies that flesh is heir to ; " it is mere idleness in the routine practitioner, carried away by the attraction of specious generalities, to fancy that one tonic is as good as another tonic, or one purgative as another purgative. In reality the true cause of the different actions of medi- cines upon the human body is admitted by the highest au- thorities to be wholly unknown ; and surely this is in itself the best of all reasons why we should not assume that we already possess against disease all the remedies which nature affords ; on the contrary, it should stimulate us to reiterated enquiries into the peculiar action of new remedial agents. The medical student rarely knows, at the time when he is acquiring his professional education, what his after des- tiny will be. A large proportion of the young men who frequent the class-rooms are scattered to all the corners of the earth ; they are perpetually liable to be cut off from supplies of the drugs of the Pharmacopoeia, and then are driven upon their own resources; and they find the medicines viii PREFACE. which are powerful in Europe, comparatively inactive in other climates. The heat of a country, its humidity, par- ticular localities, food, and the social habits of a people will predispose them to varieties of disease for which the drugs of Europe offer no sufficient remedy, and will render that which is relied upon in one country unworthy of de- pendence in another. Thus the Cinchona bark of Peru important as it is in Europe, is, we are told, rejected by the people among whom it grows, because it is found too stimulating and heating for their excitable constitutions. And speaking of Ipecacuanha Dr. Von Marti us, who so carefully examined practically the Materia Medica of Brazil, asserts " nullum est dubium quin Emetica in terris zona? fervidae subjectis effectus producent multo ma