PHARMACOPCIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
wonderful New World, sarsaparilla enjoyed a marvellous reputation, 
which evidently was not interfered with by the fact that it returned 
great profits to the dealers. A little work issued in its behalf by Giro- 
lamo Cardano (123), of Milan, 1559, advocates it most strongly in 
the direction of the diseases mentioned. It found its way into phar- 
maceutical stores, where it made an eventful record as a new remedy 
from the New World. In domestic medicine from the time of its in- 
troduction-a decoction has been “authoritatively” considered service- 
able as a “blood purifier.” It is not necessary to state that in the 
form of a sweetened decoction syrup of sarsaparilla has through sev- 
eral decades enjoyed continual conspicuity in the pharmacopeia. 
SASSAFRAS 
Sassafras is indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, occurring in 
Florida, Virginia, and as far north as Canada. It is found as far west 
as Kansas, but is there very scarce. Its occurrence in Brazil is recorded 
by Piso, 1658 (511). Sassafras was in medicinal use among the na- 
tives of Florida long before Ponce de Leon in 1512 set foot on the soil 
of this peninsula. It is generally stated and believed that the Spaniards 
in 1538, which is the date of De Soto’s invasion of Florida, were the 
first Europeans to obtain knowledge of this drug; yet we can find no 
record of such a discovery in at least two narratives of this expedi- 
tion that are accessible to us. On the other hand, there seemed to be 
sufficient evidence of the fact that the Spaniards gained a knowledge of 
sassafras and its medicinal virtues through the French Huguenot emi- 
grants, who under their unfortunate leaders, Jean Ribault and René 
Laudonniére, occupied Florida between the years 1562 and 1564. 
To the Spanish physician, Nicolaus Monardes (447), of Sevilla, 
in 1574, is to be credited the first detailed description of sassafras and 
its healing virtues, his information being gained, however, not from 
any actual experience in the sassafras lands but from personal consul- 
tation with travelers and from the government records at his com- 
mand (239). From Clusius’ (153) version of Monardes, 1593 (447), 
it is learned that the drug was imported from Florida into Spain some 
years previous to 1574, that the Spaniards in Florida, when overtaken 
by fevers and other diseases consequent to miasma and unwholesome 
drinking water, were advised by the few remaining Frenchmen to use 
this drug, which was called by the French sassafras (for reasons un- 
known to Monardes) and “pavame” by the Indians from whom the 
French obtained their information. Monardes (in Clusius’ version) 
adds that sassafras grows in Florida in maritime places, such as are 
neither too dry nor too moist, being especially plentiful near the har- 
bors of St. Helena and St. Matthews, where they form whole woods, 
which exhale such a fragrance (not true in the experience of this 
writer) that the Spaniards who first landed believed the tree to be the 
same as the cinnamon tree of Ceylon. 
The illustration given by Monardes of the sassafras tree has been 
widely copied in the herbals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
among which we name Dalechamps (1 586) (181), Joh. Bauhinus 
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