SABAL 277 



ployment by the members of the medical profession. 

 The juice of the blackberry fruit, spiced and mixed 

 with whiskey, has ever been a valued carminative 

 drink in Kentucky and other parts of the Southern 

 United States, and founded the well-known "Black- 

 berry Cordial." 



SABAL (Saw Palmetto) 



Official only in the Pharmacopeias of 1900 and 1910. 

 The berry of the saw palmetto, Serenoa serrulata, 

 (Sabal serrulata), practically unknown in medicine be- 

 fore 1879, came rapidly into conspicuity after that date, 

 in both pharmacy and medicine. It had been observed 

 by the settlers of the South that animals feeding on the 

 matured fruit "grew very sleek and fat," a fact ascribed 

 to the therapeutic qualities of the berries, and reasoning 

 from this, they prepared a decoction of the fruit for do- 

 mestic medication. 1 In 1877, Dr. Reed, of the Southern 

 United States, in an article titled "A New Remedy," 

 in the Medical Brief, (417), St. Louis, stated that sev- 

 eral persons in his neighborhood were using a prepara- 

 tion of the berry, giving instances of its use in various 

 directions. This article was reproduced hi New Prepa- 

 rations (467), July, 1879, and was followed in the same 

 publication by another article from the Medical Brief, 

 in which Dr. I. J. M. Goss, then of Marietta, Georgia, 

 stated that he had been induced to use the remedy and 

 considered it satisfactory. After this introduction the 

 drug came repeatedly to the attention of physicians. 

 Manufacturing pharmacists gave it especial attention, 

 and at the present time it is one of the most important 

 remedial products of the South. Thus the.experimenta- 



1 Since ripe saw palmetto berries contain much fixed oil it might also be inferred that 

 the/ood side of the subject should not be overlooked. L. 



