PHARMACOPCGIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
(1696) and Valentini (656b) (1698) into Germany, and 1694 by Fried. 
Dekker into Holland. 
During the first part of the eighteenth century the drug was in 
frequent use in the various pharmacies of Germany, as is evidenced 
from its being mentioned in several old documents of that age. It is, 
for example, mentioned in the authoritative drug list of the Silesian 
town of Strehlen in 1724. 
However, during the increasing employment of the drug, in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, much confusion arose as to its 
botanical origin, insomuch that it became the habit to designate as ipe- 
cacuanha any emetic plant, regardless of its botanical source. A long 
list of such plants is enumerated, for example, in Martius (409). In 
this manner the characteristics of the plant furnishing true ipecacuanha 
root became almost forgotten, other plants being substituted for it. 
Ray, for example, held it to be a species of paris, and no less an 
authority than Linnzus himself thought viola ipecacuanha now known 
as tonidum ipecacuanha (684), to be the true ipecacuanha root. 
In 1764, Mutis, a celebrated botanist in Santa Fe de Bogota, sent 
the younger Linnzus a Peruvian emetic plant with description, which 
he thought was the true ipecacuanha root. Linnzus fil. (385) accepted 
the statement of Mutis as correct and, moreover, believing the illus- 
tration given by Piso (511) of the true ipecacuanha plant to rep- 
resent the specimen he received from Mutis, in 1871 gave it the name 
psychotria emetica, Mutis. 
To Dr. Gomez (271, 272), who in 1800 returned from Brazil, is 
finally due the credit of having corrected this error. He re-established 
the nearly forgotten botanical character of true ipecacuanha in his 
memoir published at Lisbon in 1801, wherein he describes and figures 
the plant, and especially distinguishes it from Psychotria emetica, 
Mutis. 
Having donated some specimens of the plant in his possession to 
his fellow countryman, F. A. Brotero (100), professor of botany, 
Coimbra, the latter published an account of it (1802) in the Trans. 
Linn. Soc., naming it Callicocca ipecacuanha (100), but without giving 
credit to the source of his information, which chagrined Gomez con- 
siderably (422). Twelve years later Brotero left a copy of his article 
with a botanist by the name of Hectot, of Nantes, who communicated 
it to M. Tussac (656a), and the latter, in publishing it, gave it 
the name Cephaelis ipecacuanha, also laying stress upon its distinc- 
tion from Psychotria emetica, Mutis, perhaps without having had any 
knowledge of Gomez’s paper written twelve years before, 
In 1820 A. Richard (550) again called attention to this distinc- 
tion, but, as it seems, also without giving proper credit to Gomez, with 
the result that later authorities frequently quote the true ipecacuanha 
root under the name of Cephaelis ipecacuanha, A. Richard. 
JALAPA 
The purgative tuber known under the common name jalap, Exo- 
gonium purga, is a gift of Mexico, and by reason of its cathartic 
ae 
