190 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN INSTITUTE [VOL. xII 
is of looser texture, is at first sweet to the taste and as it is swallowed 
it leaves a bitter taste’. Harz!! also informs us that the ‘‘male kind”’ 
was harder, heavier, greyer, and more rimose, the ‘‘female kind”’ 
smoother on the surface, and of softer texture. These are differences 
that are apparently due to age and in that connection to the amount 
of resin present—the amount increases with age. 
Dioscorides allotted to it a very important place in the materia 
medica of the day, affirming that? ‘‘its properties are styptic and heat- 
producing, efficacious against colic and sores, fractured limbs, and 
bruises from falls; the dose is two obols weight with wine and honey 
to those who have no fever; in fever cases with honeyed water; it is 
given in liver complaints, asthma, jaundice, dysentery, kidney diseases- 
where there is difficulty in passing water, in cases of hysteria, and to 
those of a sallow complexion, in doses of one drachma; in cases of phthisis 
it is administered in raisin wine, in affections of the spleen with honey 
and vinegar. By persons troubled with pains in the stomach and by 
those who suffer from acid eructations, the root is chewed and swallowed 
by itself without any liquid; it stops bleeding when taken with water 
in three-obol doses; it is good for pains in the loins and joints; in epilepsy 
when taken with an equal quantity of honey and vinegar; it assists 
menstruation and relieves flatulence in women when taken with equal 
proportions of honey and vinegar. It prevents rigor if taken before 
the attack; in one- and two-drachma doses, it acts as a purgative when 
taken with honeyed water; it is an antidote in poisons in one-drachma 
doses with dilute wine. In three-obol doses with wine it is a relief in 
cases of bites and wounds caused by serpents. On the whole, it is ser- 
viceable in all internal complaints when taken according to the age and 
strength of the patient; some should take it with water, others with 
wine, and others with vinegar and honey or with water and honey”’. 
From the time of Dioscorides to the present, Agaricum (Polyporus 
officinalis) has found a place in the pharmacopoeia, though in recent 
times one of diminished splendour. It is still official in Austria, Germany 
and Switzerland, and finds a place in the French Codex, under the 
names Agaricus albus, Fungus Laricis, Agaricinum, Acidum agari- 
cinum, Agaric blanc s. purgatif, Bolet du Méléze, etc. Galen and Pliny 
wrote extravagantly of it, and likewise the herbalists and pharmacists 
down to the beginning of the last century. Turning to the most dis- 
tinguished of our English herbalists’, one finds an account scarcely 
less optimistic than that given by Dioscorides. 
“There groweth also upon the larch tree’, recounts Gerard, ‘“‘a 
kind of mushrum or excrescence, not such as is upon other trees, but 
whiter, softer, more loose and spungie than any other of the mushrums, 
