RHAMNUS CaTHARTICUS. ORD. XXXVII. Dumose, 595 
THIS shrub is covered with dark brownish bark, divided into 
many branches, beset with strong spines, and usually rises seven 
or eight feet in height: the leaves are nearly elliptical, serrated, 
veined, and stand on shortish footstalks: the flowers are commonly 
male and female upon different plants, small, greenish, and placed 
in clusters upon simple peduncles: the calyx supplies the place 
of a corolla, it is funnel-shaped, of a pale green colour, and 
divided at the extremity into four spreading pointed segments: 
the filaments are usually four, arising from the base of a small 
convex scale, very short, and furnished with round antherz ; the 
germen is round, and supports a slender style, terminated by a 
trifid stigma: the fruit is a round black berry, containing four 
seeds, which are compressed on one side, and protuberant on the 
other. It is a native of Britain, usually growing in woods and 
hedges near brooks, flowering in May and June, and ripening its 
seeds about the end of September. 
The fruit or berries of this Shrub, which have been long received 
into the Materia Medica, are about the size of a small pea, and 
when ripe of a shining black colour: they contain a pulpy deep 
green juice,* which has a faint unpleasant smell, and a bitterish, 
acrid, nauseous taste: they operate briskly by stool, and hence 
the plant derives the trivial name catharticus:* their purgative 
effects are constantly accompanied with considerable thirst, and 
dryness of the mouth and throat, and frequently with severe 
griping of the bowels, especially unless some diluting liquor be 
plentifully drunk immediately after taking them. 
‘“« The dose is said tobe about twenty of the fresh berries in 
substance; twice or thrice that number in decoction: a dram or 
a dram and a half of the dried berries; an ounce of the expressed 
* This juice is called by the French Verd de Vessie, er Sap Green, and is used 
for painting or staining paper: that of the unripe berries is yellow, and when the 
berries are gathered late in the autumn, the juice is purple. It is also used as @ 
dye. See Lin. Flor. Suec. p. 72. 
» It is reported that the flesh of those birds which feed upon these berries is 
purgative. Homberg, Mem. de l’ Acad. des Sc. de Paris, 1712. p. 9. 
