PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
Brief, in which Dr. I. J. M. Goss, then of Marietta, Georgia, states 
that he had been induced to use the remedy and considered it a satis- 
factory one. After this introduction the drug came repeatedly to the 
attention of practitioners of medicine. Manufacturing pharmacists 
gave it especial attention, and at the present time it is one of the most 
important remedial productions of the South. Thus the experimenta- 
tion of the people, following its apparent effect on animals, was fol- 
lowed in turn by the investigations of the medical profession, and 
the remedy was finally introduced to the pages of the Pharmacopeia. 
In our opinion the volatile oil and its decomposition products are of 
exceeding interest and will yet be a prolific source of detailed research. 
SABINA 
Sabina (Juniperus sabina) is native to the mountainous portions 
of Austria, Switzerland, and some parts of France, being also found 
in the Pyrenees, Italy, the Caucasus, and other countries in regions 
far above the sea level. It is also found in the northern parts of North 
America. Sabina was used in veterinary medicine, as mentioned by 
Marcus Porcius Cato (132), a Roman author, 200 B. C. It was also 
known to Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514). The early domestic 
leech-books, before the Norman Conquest, gave it a place. Charle- 
magne ordered that it should be cultivated on the imperial farm. 
Macer Floridus (397), in the tenth century, commended the use of 
Sabina in wounds and ulcers. 
SACCHARUM 
The sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum) is cultivated in all 
tropical countries, such as India, China, Mexico, the West Indies, etc. 
Its native land is probably India, or the Indo-Chinese countries and 
islands. As made from the cane, sugar has been known from time 
immemorial. It is mentioned by such early writers as Theophrastus 
(633), Herodotus (314a), and others, who knew raw sugar as honey 
of canes, and in the early Christian era sugar became well known under 
the name saccharon. Dioscorides (194), A. D. 77, describes it as ob- 
tained from India and Arabia Felix, stating that it resembled salt in 
brittleness. Pliny (514) mentions it under the name saccharum, and 
an unknown writer, A. D. 54-68, mentions it as an article of import 
to the ports of the Red Sea opposite Aden (see Burton for description 
of that country, “First Footprints” (113), etc.), but it is doubtful 
whether it was brought from the eastern or western parts of India. 
It is mentioned by Abu Zayd al Hasan (240), A. D. 850, as produced 
on the Persian Gulf, and A. D. 950 Moses of Chorene states that it 
was then manufactured in quantities. Sugar was introduced into medi- 
cine in the tenth and eleventh centuries by Rhazes (a physician of Bag- 
dad and Persia, who died about A. D. 923), Haly Abbas (295), and 
others ; but it had ever been employed, as it is still employed, in domestic 
medicine for the purpose of disguising unpleasant materials and for 
sweetening acrid substances. Burton (113) found crude sugar an 
72 
