PHARMACOPCIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
A native of Eastern Asia, it is found under various names, from Japan 
to India, from the Orient to North America, where European colonists 
carried it, according to Josselyn (345), before 1670. In early days of 
English medizval medication it was employed in decoctions for fevers, 
and as a hot drink, to promote perspiration. The juice was also em- 
ployed empirically for sore eyes, and as an application to warts. Its 
popular use, as heired from a time lost to history, led to its final utili- 
zation by the medical profession, and to its position in the medieval 
herbals, as also in many pharmacopeias and treatises on European 
medicines and medication. 
JATEORHIZA CALUMBA* 
Persons familiar with our common yellow parilla, Menispermum 
canadense, have a good idea of the plant that yields the calumba root 
of commerce. Indeed, a casual observer would take an illustration of 
one for the other, so closely do they resemble each other in shape of 
leaf, stem, and general floral appearance. One author, Roxburgh 
(559) (Flora Ind., Vol. 3, p. 807) has placed the plant in the genus 
menispermum. ‘The genus jateorhiza as now constituted consists of 
three species, all natives of tropical Africa. It belongs to the natural 
order menispermacez. The plant which produces the colombo root of 
commerce is a herbaceous vine climbing over trees in the forests of 
eastern tropical Africa in the territory of Mozambique and Quilimani. 
The leaves are alternate, petiolate, cordate, and palmately lobed. As 
previously stated, they look very much like the leaves of our common 
yellow parilla. The flowers are dioecious and borne in pendulous axil- 
lary panicles. The female flowers have six sepals, six petals, six abor- 
tive stamens, and three pistils. The male flowers have the same floral 
envelopes and six perfect stamens. The anthers, as in yellow parilla, 
are four-celled, a structure comparatively rare save in this natural 
order. The plants that produce the root of commerce vary much in 
the shape of the leaves and in the amount of hispidity in the stem, 
and were formerly considered as belonging to two species, Jateorhiza 
calumba and Jateorhiza palmata, but later botanists have united them 
under the former name. 
Calumba (also columbo) root has long been in use under the name 
“kalumb” among the African tribes of Mozambique, who employed 
it as a remedy for dysentery and other diseases (Berry) (63). Un- 
doubtedly the drug was brought by them to the immediate knowledge 
of the Portuguese when they obtained possession of that country in 
1508. Through the influence of their traders, knowledge of the drug 
was slowly diffused among the Europeans during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. 
to its healing virtues. Most German and a few English authorities (e. g. Flueckiger, the 
name 
it with ~ In thi 
including the Index Kewensis, and the U. pharmacopeia of 1 
nosie, 1886), suggests that the name jatrorhiza, should be used instead of jateorhiza, and 
so also does Koehler (Medicinal-pflanzen, 140). 
BL 
