CONVALLARIA 109 



in North and South America and throughout England 

 and other similar locations. It was known to the 

 Greeks, who are said to have used it to execute crimi- 

 nals. Tradition has it that a decoction of this plant 

 was the drug (^OP^KOV) drunk by Socrates (334). 

 Conium was long known under the name Cicuta, but to 

 avoid confusion with Cicuta virosa, Linnaeus (385), in 

 1737, restored its classical name, Conium maculatum, 

 or poison hemlock, the word hemlock being Saxon, 

 meaning leek of the border, or shore. Storck (617), of 

 Vienna, in 1760, introduced conium into medicine. 



CONVALLARIA (Lily of the Valley) 



Named in but two editions of the U. S. P., those of 1890 and 

 1900. 



Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis, is recorded 

 as one of the earliest domestic remedies, being accepted 

 by Dr. Squibb (610a) as "continuously used in medicine 

 for several hundred years" (Ephemeris, January, 1884). 

 In The British Medical Journal, November, 1883, 

 Dr. Edward Drummond, of Rome, states that in a book 

 of Commentaries on the Materia Medico, of Dioscorides, 

 Venice, 1621, Dr. Pietro Andrea Matthioli (414) 

 speaks as follows of its use in cardiac diseases: 



"The Germans use Lily of the Valley to strengthen 

 the heart, the brain, and the spiritual parts, and also 

 give it in palpitation, vertigo, epilepsy, and apoplexy, 

 etc." 



This article led Dr. Squibb, who had also received 

 some private information in a letter "from a very care- 

 ful and close observer," to favor the drug as a hopeful 

 remedy that, in specific and restricted directions, would 

 be better employed than digitalis. To such an extent 



