154 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



(194), and was commonly known in Europe during the 

 Middle Ages. Its price in England, in the day of 

 Henry III, was equal to that of grains of paradise. It 

 was one of the articles paying duty to aid in the repair- 

 ing of London Bridge in the day of Edward I, 1305. 

 Saladinus, (570), in the 15th century, mentioned it as 

 an Italian medicine, and it was commonly known in 

 the city of Frankfort in 1450. Matthioli (414), in 1574, 

 states that the juice, in the form of pastilles, was 

 brought every year from Apulia. Indeed, the record of 

 licorice is to the effect that it has been an article of do- 

 mestic use, as a "sweet wood" for chewing, as a con- 

 stitutent of medicinal pastes, and in the form of a 

 common water extract, since the earliest times. It is 

 found in large quantities in the localities where it is 

 cultivated, in Sicily, Italy and Spain, while in compar- 

 atively recent years whilst traveling in Turkey we have 

 noted the immense amounts of licorice roots annually 

 collected in the valleys of the Hermes and the Kayster, 

 Turkey, where it has probably grown wild from all times. 

 While studying the products of those valleys, we ob- 

 served the diggers of licorice, who, contrasted with well- 

 to-do Turks, are on a par with our American root dig- 

 gers. They sell their product to the local depots of the 

 American Tobacco Company. From daylight to dark 

 these people work, for a bare living. 



The licorice plant reminded us somewhat of the wild 

 "Trumpet Creeper" of Kentucky, which, once estab- 

 lished, is so persistent in root shoots. We found lic- 

 orice creeping up, even through the crevices of the 

 stones of the old Roman roads in the valley of the 

 Meander, leading to Ayasoluk. This reminded us that 

 we had seen the trumpet creeper shoots, forty feet from 



