176 PHARMACOPEIA!, DRUGS 



are intermediate grades, depending upon the relative 

 amount of the two kinds present. As my results show, 

 this value is based upon a false assumption, for the 

 'wiry' root ought to be the most expensive, and the 

 'fancy' root ought to he the cheapest." 



JALAPA (Jalap) 



Official in every edition, from 1820 to 1910. 



The purgative tuber known under the common name 

 jalap, Exogonium Purga, is a gift of Mexico. The early 

 Spanish voyagers learned of its cathartic qualities from 

 the natives, and in the 16th century carried large quan- 

 tities to Europe, where it naturally became a favorite, 

 in the days of heroic medication. Monardes (447), in 

 1565, mentions a cathartic under the name Mechoacan 

 rhubarb, or root, which some believe to have been jalap, 

 but Fliickiger (239) discredits this, because Colon, an 

 apothecary of Lyons, in 1619, states that jalap was 

 then newly brought to France. Fliickiger also accepts 

 that both drugs were well known in 1610, although often 

 confused. Owing to this confusion between the bulbs, 

 one was called Black Mechoacan, while the other was 

 known as White Jalap. Strangely enough, the exact 

 botanical source of jalap remained a question until 1829, 

 when Dr. Coxe, (171), of Philadelphia, author of 

 Coxe's American Dispensatory, identified the drug from 

 living plants sent to him from Mexico, and published 

 descriptions, with colored plates, in the American Jour- 

 nal of Medical Sciences, (17a), 1829. This celebrated 

 cathartic, so much used by both licensed physicians 

 and in domestic medication, is to be credited to the 

 natives of Mexico, whose employment of the drug 

 introduced it to European commercial adventurers, 



