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SMILAX SARSAPARILLA. ORD. VII. Sarmeénfacce. 163 
Spain * as an undoubted specific in syphilitic disorders, and was also 
celebrated as a medicine in some other diseases of the chronic kind. 
But whether it was owing to a difference of climate, or other causes, 
European practitioners soon found that it by no means answered 
the charatter which it had acquired in the Spanish West Indies, and 
therefore it became very much neglected. Many physicians how- 
ever still consider the Sarsaparilla to be a medicine of much efficacy ; 
and though they admit that by the use of this root alone we are not 
to expect a cure of the lues venerea, yet they assert that when it is 
given along with mercury, the disease is much sooner subdued ; and 
that ulcers, nodes,.and otlier symptoms of this disorder, which resisted 
the effects of repeated salivations, have afterwards disappeared by 
the continued use of Sarsaparilla. In proof of this, we find several 
cases. related by the late Sir William Fordyce:* but it may be 
remarked, that ulcers, and other complaints, which continue after a 
properly conducted course of mercury, are often rather to be con- 
sidered as the vestiges of the lues than the actual disease, and con- 
sequently any other medicine possessing no antivenereal power, but 
improving the general habit of body, might be employed with equal 
success. _ Admitting this, however, is not denying the utility of 
Sarsaparilla, which has been decidedly done by.a late ingenious 
professor.‘ _ It is in frequent use at most of the London hospitals, 
and we have known patients, after the use of mercury, much 
sooner restored to health by this root than i in our opinion could 
have been accomplished by. any other medicine. with which we are 
acquainted, especially when employed i in, powder. : 
This root is also recommended in rheumatic affections, scrophula, 
and cutaneous. complaints, or where an acrimony of the fluids 
prevail. It may be given in decoction or powder, and should be 
continued in large doses for a considerable time. 
© Bauhine states its first introduction into Spain to be about the year 1573. But 
Monardes informs us, that it was brought. from New Spain to Madrid twenty or 
-thirty years before this time. The word Sarsaparilla is of Spanish origin. ‘* Zarsa 
siquidem Hispanis rubrum; parra autem vitem, ty ‘eta viticulam significat.” — 
CG. Bauh i Ce * ZL, C. ir. Cullen. 
