32 FLORA HOMOPATHICA. 
duced from the Bonplandia trifoliata, and by which name it is 
called in Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura; but Dr. Han- 
cock, who resided in the district which yields the bark for some 
years, has shown that it is obtained from a different species 
of the same genus, which differs essentially from the plant 
described by Bonpland; the one being a magnificent, stately 
tree, sixty to eighty feet high, while that described by Hancock 
never exceeding twenty feet. 
As a medicine it was in great request at the end of the 
last and beginning of this century; indeed, it had almost as 
great a reputation as Cinchona bark, and was used as a febri- 
fuge in intermittent and remittent, in adynamic and con- 
tinued fevers; in general relaxation and muscular debility, 
and in atonic conditions of the stomach. It was also given to 
check profuse mucous discharges, and was found efficacious in 
chronic dysentery and diarrhea; but like very many of the 
remedies of the old school, owing to its indiscriminate use in 
diseases to which it was not specific, it fell into disuse, and is 
at present rarely employed in the allopathic prescriptions. The 
cause for this has been attributed by Christison and others to 
its dangerous adulterations with the bark of the Strychnos Nux 
Vomica. 
Descrietion.—The Galipea officinalis is a beautiful shrub, 
seldom or ever exceeding the altitude of twenty feet, the usual 
medium being about twelve or fifteen feet, flowering in vast pro- 
fusion during the months of August and September ; the seeds 
ripening in October and November. Diameter of the trunk, 
which is tolerably erect, is from three to five inches. Branches 
scattered, slender, and bending nearly to the ground. Bark 
smooth, externally grey, and yellow within. Leaves placed, 
for the most part, alternately on branches composed of three 
folioles, supported on a common petiole of nearly the same 
length as the leaflets. Leaflets oblong, six to ten inches in 
length, two to four in breadth, centre one longer than the 
lateral, smooth and glossy, of a vivid green; when broken, 
