PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
and as a stomachic remedy by the natives of the afore-named and other 
countries since the date of the discovery of the remedy, and probably 
from all time preceding. Pepper was mentioned by Theophrastus 
(633), who described two kinds. Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514) 
both give it a place in their writings. As early as 64 A. D. it was 
mentioned as occurring on the Malabar Coast. The Romans at Alex- 
andria, A. D. 176, levied on it a duty. The Arabian authors of the 
Middle Ages, twelfth and fourteenth centuries, described it fairly. In 
the European countries of the Middle Ages pepper was considered 
the most important of all spices, being the foundation of much of the 
wealth of Venice and Genoa during their greatest commercial activity. 
It has been used as a medium of exchange when money was scarce, 
and when Rome was besieged by the Goths the ransom included three 
thousand pounds of pepper. In fact the value placed upon pepper in 
the records of the past is in itself an indication of its importance to 
the people who used it. 
PODOPHYLLUM 
This handsome plant, Podophyllum peltatum, known also as man- 
drake, or may apple, is one of the most attractive features of the early 
spring in North America, resisting with remarkable efficiency the ag- 
gressive inroads of the agriculturist. It was used by the North Ameri- 
can Indians, the Cherokees employing the fresh juice of the root for 
deafness, and the Wyandottes made a drastic cathartic, from which the 
drug’s harsher qualities were removed by roasting. The once cele- 
brated “Indian doctors,” Peter Smith (605) and others, employed the 
root as an escharotic, in which direction it came into early veterinary 
practice. The early American physicians and writers on medicine 
praised its qualities as a purgative, its active cathartic nature having 
been known, as has been said, from the days of the Indians. The 
vegetable substitute for the once popular antimonial plaster used so 
freely by “Regular” physicians was the Compound Tar Plaster of the 
Eclectics. This contained podophyllum, phytolacca, and sanguinaria. 
PRUNUM 
The cultivated varieties of the prune tree (prunus or prunes) are 
believed to descend from a wild prune native to Greece, the shores of 
the Black Sea, and the Caucasus, reaching even into Persia. Pliny 
(514) records the fact that one of the numerous varieties of the plum 
tree known in his day afforded a laxative fruit. The pulp of the 
prune has been used in domestic medicine as well as by the medical 
profession, parallelling (or following) the efforts of those concerned 
in early medication. The pulp of the French prune was an ingredient 
of the once celebrated Lenitive Electuary. History does not record 
the beginning of the use of this fruit in the confections formerly so 
popular in domestic medicine. 
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