GOSSYPII CORTEX 155 



a parent stock, creeping through a floor crevice in a 

 Kentucky home, even slipping up between the stones 

 of the hearth. 



GOSSYPII CORTEX (Cotton Root Bark) 



Introduced into U. S. P. in 1860, Secondary List. Official 

 from 1870 until 1900. Dropped from 1910 editipn. 



Gossypium, the fiber, has been official in all editions from 1850. 



Cotton root bark, Gossypii radicis cortex, is used as a 

 stimulant and emmenagogue, the decoction being con- 

 sidered, in the days of American slavery, capable of pro- 

 ducing abortion. It was thus introduced by the ne- 

 groes, and from thence came into the hands of the pro- 

 fession, being first employed by physicians of the 

 Southern United States. Following this introduction, 

 Wallace Brothers, of Statesville, South Carolina, at the 

 request of the writer, (Eclectic Medical Journal, [217] 

 February, 1876), forwarded to him a barrel of fresh 

 cotton root bark, preserved in alcohol. This was made 

 into a fluid extract, and distributed to American prac- 

 ticing physicians, with a request that the results of its 

 use be reported, in contrast with the preparation from 

 the dried bark, deemed by some to be inert. A sum- 

 mary of more than forty reports from practicing physi- 

 cians, together with remarks concerning the preparation 

 of gossypium employed, was read before the Twenty- 

 Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Pharma- 

 ceutical Association, 1876. This treatise, together with 

 the increasing demand from physicians throughout 

 America for preparations of gossypium root bark, led 

 to its introduction to the Pharmacopeia of the United 

 States. The credit for the discovery of its uses must be 

 given to the negroes of the South. The Lilly Scientific 

 Bulletin, Series 1, No. 10, July, 1920, "Contribution 



