CINA. 177 
which are described under the names Artemisia absinthium and 
Artemisia Contra. ‘his latter is the A. santonica or Contra of 
Linneus, its name being an abbreviation of Contra vermes. 
Lindley (Veget. Kingdom, p. 705) says that the drug called 
Semen contra or Semen Cine is made up of the flower-heads of 
many species of Artemisia; those which form the principal 
part of this substance are A. Sieberi, A. Larcheana, A. Contra, 
and A. pauciflora: the flower-heads of A. Vahliaria also 
furnish one of the kinds of Wormseed, called Semen Cine 
Levanticum, or Semen Cine in grains. It was formerly supposed 
that the virtues of the Artemisia Contra as a vermifuge resided in 
the bitterness of the extract; but, according to the experiments 
of Baglivi and Redi, lumbrici immersed in the infusion of this 
substance were killed in five to seven hours; whilst in an 
infusion of wormwood they continued to live for thirty hours 
and upwards. So that the vermifuge effects could not wholly 
depend upon the bitterness of this substance. 
Description. — The plant is a hardy shrub, perennial, 
and flowering in the autumn. The drug is made up of 
undeveloped flowers, calyces, and fragments of peduncles, 
mixed with foreign matters. It is imported from Barbary and 
the Levant; the latter being deemed the best, being less 
adulterated, and of a greenish hue, and smooth; while that 
from Barbary is grey and downy. M. Tournefort gives the 
following account of this drug in the second volume of his 
Travels: ‘ The Sementine or Worm-powder is not gathered 
like our seeds. The plant grows in the meadows, and must be 
let ripen; and the mischief is that, as it grows near to maturity, 
the wind scatters a good part of it among the grass, where it is 
lost, and this makes it so dear. As they dare not touch it with 
the hand, for fear of making it spoil the sooner, when they 
would gather what was left in the ear, they have recourse to 
this expedient: they take two hand-baskets, and walking along 
the meadows sweep the baskets, the one from right to left, the 
other from left to right, as if they were mowing ; by this means. 
