622 FILICES. 



rocks and under trees. The root is steeped in water, and tlie 

 juice extracted ; sometimes, too, it is cut in small pieces 

 and sprinkled upon cabbage, beet, mallows^ or salt meat ; 

 or else it is boiled in pap as a gentle aperient for the bowels. 

 It carries off bile and the pituitous humors, but acts injuriously 

 upon the stomach. Dried and powdered and applied to the 

 nostrils, it cauterizes polypus of the nose. It has neither seed 

 nor flower. In Germany there was a myth in ancient times 

 that the plant sprang from the milk of the goddess Freya, and 

 in more recent times the Virgin Mary was credited with its 

 origin. Owing to the sweetness of the rhizome, it is, in some 

 parts of France, called "reglisse" or *' liquorice/' 



The Persians call the plant Tashtiwan and Baspaik; the 

 latter name in the Arabic form of Basfaij is now current 

 throughout the East as the name of the drug, and is used by 

 Ibn Sina and the Arabian physicians. The Arabian names for 

 the plant are, Azras-el-kalb '* dog's tooth," in allusion to the 

 toothed appearance of the leaves, Kathir-el-rijl " many-footed," 

 and Thakib-el-hajar ** penetrating stones." The Mahometan 

 physicians use it as an aperient, deobstrucnt, and alterative 

 combined with myrobalans and fumitory ; they consider that 

 it acts as an expeller of all kinds of peccant humors ; for 

 instance, we have seen it prescribed in cataract and amaurosis 

 by Indian hakims. It is not an article of the Hindu Materia 

 Medica. 



Description. — The dried rhizome occurs in pieces of 



various lengths, and of the thickness of a quill. It is flattened, 

 of a yellowish-brown colour externally, green internally, but 

 when old yellowish ; the upper surface is studded with tubercles, 

 to some of which a portion of the base of the frond still adheres. 

 The under surface is more or less spinous from the remains of 

 broken radicles. The taste is sweetish, astringent, nauseous, 

 and somewhat acrid ; odour ferny. Under the microscope, the 

 rhizome is seen to consist of a delicate cellular structure 

 containing much starch and green granular matter; it is 

 traversed by large bundles of scalariform vessels. 



