EUPATORIUM PERFOLIATUM. 
decussate each other at regular distances upon the stem ; in 
other words, the direction of each pair is at right angles with 
that of the pair immediately above or beneath it. They are 
narrow in proportion to their length, broadest at the base 
where they coalesce, gradually tapering to a point, serrate, 
much wrinkled, paler on the inside than the upper surface, 
and beset with whitish hairs which give them the same color 
as the stalks. The uppermost pairs are sessile, not joined at 
the base. The flowers are white, numerous, supported on 
hairy peduncles in dense, depressed, terminal corymbs, which 
form a flattened summit to the plant. The calyx, which is 
cylindrical, and composed of imbricated, lanceolate, hairy 
scales, incloses from twelve to fifteen tubular florets, having 
their border divided into five spreading segments. The an- 
thers are five in number, black, and united into a tube, through 
which the bifid filiform style projects above the flower. The 
seeds are black, prismatic, acute at base, on a naked tocepher 
cle. The pappus has scabrous hairs. 
This plant appears to have been known and held in riveicts 
estimation by the Aborigines of America. The first Euro- 
pean settlers of this continent derived their knowledge of its 
virtues from them, and it became a favorite and universal 
remedy in domestic practice long before it attracted the atten- 
tion of the profession. It received the name of Boneset from 
the fact of its having been employed in a painful disease 
called break-bone fever, and in New England it is called 
Joepye, from an Indian of that name who cured Meron with 
it by a copious. eg fate a, a 
CHEMICAL AND MEDIOAL PROPERTIES AND USES. 
No accurate analysis of the EuraTorrum PeRFoLIaTum has 
been made since the recent improvements in vegetable chem- 
istry. An examination of it some years since, by Dr. Bige- 
low, showed that the leaves and flowers abound in a bitter 
extractive matter, and which is probably the active principle. 
It is soluble in water and alcohol, and forms copious precipi- 
tates with the metallic salts. It has a faint agreeable odor, 
and a strongly bitter and somewhat peculiar taste. Rafi- 
nesque speaks of a peculiar substance in it which he calls 
Eupatorine, and says it is brown, bitter, resiniform, soluble ae 
water and alcohol, forming sulphates, nitrates,&c. 
en of the plant are used, but the herb only is: offici- — 
nal. ee mapa: In large doses, — 
. 
