CLEMATIS ERECTA. 181 
the skin, fell into disuse until the time of Baron Storck, in 
1769,* who first recommended it as a useful internal remedy in 
many obstinate complaints; chronic diseases of the skin, ulcers 
cancers, and severe headaches; and in a remarkable case of 
melancholia (vide Stérck, Lib. de Pulsat., p.57). Notwithstand- 
ing its success, it has seldom been employed by other physicians, 
although it found a place in one of the earlier editions of the 
Edinburgh Dispensatory. The secret of Baron Stérck’s success 
consisted in his having unwittingly prescribed this drug accord- 
ing to the homeopathic principle, this medicine producing 
on persons in health the very symptoms which accompanied the 
diseases in which he employed it so successfully; and it is 
worthy of observation, that the same result, from the same 
cause, occurred more than once to Stérck, with drugs which 
entirely failed in other hands. 
At the present time, Clematis does not enter into any of the 
allopathic prescriptions. 
Description.—The root is perennial, white, and fibrous. 
Stem three feet high, leafy, striated, herbaceous, greenish, or 
reddish. eaves large, opposite. Leaflets from five to nine, 
pubescent underneath, petioled. Flowers white ; in upright, 
stiff, terminal umbels. Peduncles several times ternate. Petals 
oblong, obtuse, somewhat villous, a little longer than the sta- 
mens. Seeds few, dark brown, smooth, orbicular, much com- 
pressed; tails long, yellowish, plumose. Flowers J uly and 
August. 
Like some of the other species of this genus it is extremely 
acrid, on which account it was called Flammula by the old 
botanists. Gerarde gives the derivation of the name Virgin's 
Bower, “by reason of the goodly shadow which they make with 
their thick bushing and climbing, as also for the beauty of the 
flowers and the pleasant scent or savour of the same.” 
* He published several cases of its successful employment, particularly in inve- 
terate syphilitic complaints, which had produced headache, pains in the bones, 
nodes, ulcers, cutaneous affections, ete. (Libell. de Flammula Jovis). 
r 
