PHARMACOPGIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
The first definite information regarding calumba root, however, 
dates from the year 1671, when Franciscus Redi, 1626-1697, (538), 
born at Arezzo and physician to the Duke of Toscana, describing it 
under the name calumba, made its medicinal virtues conspicuous. 
In 1695 the celebrated Leeuwenhoek (376), in his work “Arcana 
Naturae,”’ recorded some chemical experiments that he had made with 
this root, which he calls radix indica, rays columba. He also intro- 
duced illustrations of crystals observed in the study of this drug. Con- 
temporaneously with this physicist, J. C. Semmedus (592) (probably 
in 1689 or shortiy before) mentions calumba in his writings as occur- 
ring among drugs originating from India. This author’s work has 
become more prominent in a later edition (1722). 
Valmont-Bomare (656c) in the 1764 edition of his dictionary de- 
scribes “calumbe” as the root of an unknown tree brought to us from 
India. He adds that in Bengal this root is considered a specific in 
cases of colics, indigestion, and against the effects of “mort-du-chien,” 
which is the old French name for colchicum. 
Not, however, until in close succession the treatises on calumba 
root by Gaubius (257a), 1771, Cartheuser (129), 1773, and Per- 
cival (499), 1773, appeared, was there much general distribution of 
knowledge concerning this drug. In this connection it is perhaps of 
interest to note that in a previous translation (dated 1755) of Cart- 
heuser’s Materia Medica calumba root is not to be found. 
Through Percival’s recommendation especially the drug rapidly 
gained entrance into European materia medicas, and since about 1776 
we find a record of it in many of the pharmacopceias of European 
countries. However, the geographical and botanical origin of calumba 
root as yet remained a mystery. The Portuguese, as already stated, 
having had a monopoly of the trade in this article, seemed to have 
been careful not to disclose the origin of the drug and made it a custom 
to carry it to India and then to export it to Europe from Indian in- 
stead of African ports. Hence, for a long time the general impression 
prevailed that the plant was a native of India and that the capital of 
Ceylon (Colombo) gave the drug its name. 
From about 1770, however, the suspicion that calumba root was of 
African origin had been gaining ground. In this year Philibert Com- 
merson, a French physician, collected a specimen of a certain plant 
which was growing in the garden of M. Poivre in the Isle de France, 
which Lamarck in 1797 named Menispermum palmatum, stating that 
this menispermum (of which he described the male plant only) per- 
haps yielded the root that is brought to us from India under the name 
of calombo or colombo root. He adds, however, that “it seems to be 
indigenous to India.” 
_ An 1805 a distinct advance was made in establishing its African 
origin. M. Fortin in this year brought the root of a male calumba 
plant from Mozambique to the city of Madras, where it was raised 
and cultivated by Dr. James Anderson. From this specimen Dr. Berry 
(63), in 1811, published a botanical description in the “Asiatic Re- 
searches,” in which he also gives definite information regarding its 
origin and uses in its native country. The specimen was transported 
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