ore ae 
ARBUTUS UVA URSI. ORD: XVII. Bicornes. 289 
grounds. The leaves of this plant, in a dried state, have no remark- 
able smell, but a bitterish astringent taste, and by some are used 
for the purpose of dying an ash-colour, and for tanning leather. 
The sapid matter of these leaves has been attributed rather to the 
presence of gummy than of resinous particles, as watery menstrua 
extract their virtues more completely than spirituous. : 
The Uva Ursi, though employed by the ancients in several dis- 
eases requiring astringent medicines, had almost entirely fallen 
into disuse till about the middle of the present century, when it first 
drew the attention of physicians as a useful remedy in calculous and 
nephritic affections; and in the years 1763 and 1764, by the 
concurrent testimonies of different authors,‘ it acquired remarkable 
celebrity not only for its efficacy in gravelly complaints, but in 
almost every other to which the urinary organs are liable, as ulcers 
of the kidneys and bladder, cystirrhoea, diabetes, &c. and its utility 
was then thought to be so fully established, that a Spanish writer‘, 
made it his boast that the man, to whom these important discoveries 
of the effects of this plant ought first to be referred, was his 
countryman. He was however superseded in this claim by the 
physicians at Montpelier, who had been in the habit of prescribing 
Uva Ursi in these’ diseases for many years before.* © But the cases 
published successively by De Haen tended more to raise the medi- 
cal character of Uva Ursi over Europe than all the other books 
professedly written on the virtues of this plant: and encouraged 
by his success, many practitioners in this country have been in- 
duced to try its effects; and though the use of this plant has been 
frequently observed to mitigate the pains in calculous cases, yet 
in no instances do we find that it has produced. that essential or 
© Murray App. Med, vol. ti. p. 58. 
* De Haen, Gerhard, Quer, Girardi, Murray, Buchoz, and others. 
& Quer. See the French version of his book, viz. Dissertation sur la maladie 
nephrilique, et sur son veritable spectfique le Raisin dours, p. 84. 
» Vide Barbeirac form. Med, p. 163. 
No. 25.—vot. 2. AD 
