244: Asclepias tuberosa. 
able expectorant effect. But a regard for truth obliges me to 
state that the virtues of this plant are, as far as my experience 
extends, considerably exaggerated, there being ascribed to it a 
multitude of powerful, extraordinary, and almost inestimable pro- 
perties, to which its virtual character affords no substantial claim. 
It must be remembered, however, that these remarks are not in- 
tended to stigmatise the Pleurisy-root as worthless, for I deem it a 
valuable article ; my only object is to endeavour to present to the 
public its prominent virtues, divested of what, in my own opinion, is 
an aggregation of imputed but unreal qualities. A gentleman of 
Virginia who, judged by his own writing, is evidently not a regular 
physician, first brought this plant into very general notice, as a cure 
for the pleurisy. He has been quoted by the late Professor 
Barton, and subsequently by the compilers of the American dis- 
pensatories ; and thus have his exaggerated accounts been ex- 
tensively diffused throughout our country, without any other good 
effect, perhaps, than that of bringing a plant into general notice, 
which really possesses medicinal virtues, though not of the na- 
ture ‘and number specified in those accounts. To the gentle- 
man alluded to, however, is not to be imputed the discovery of the 
remediate effects of pleurisy-root. Dr. Shepf mentions the plant, 
and specifies the property for which it seems to me most probable, 
it will become useful : its effect in inducing diaphoresis. He says it 
is a diaphoretic in the dose of one drachm ; that it is slightly astrin- = 
‘gent; that the powdered root is useful in cholic; an aqueous de- 
coction, in hysteria and menorrhagia; and a vinous decoction in’ 
