290 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



of the fact that the Spaniards gained a knowledge of 

 sassafras and its medicinal virtues through the French 

 Huguenot emigrants, who under their unfortunate 

 leaders, Jean Ribault and Ren6 Laudonniere, occupied 

 Florida between the years 1562 and 1564. 



To the Spanish physician, Nicolaus Monardes (447) 

 of Se villa, in 1574, is to be credited the first detailed 

 description of sassafras and its healing virtues, his in- 

 formation being gained, however, not from actual 

 experience in the sassafras lands, but from personal con- 

 sultation with travelers and from the government 

 records at his command. (239). From Clusius' (153) 

 version of Monardes, 1593, it is learned that the drug 

 was imported from Florida into Spain some years pre- 

 vious to 1574, that the Spaniards in Florida, when over- 

 taken by fevers and other diseases consequent to 

 miasma and unwholesome drinking water, were advised 

 by the few remaining Frenchmen to use this drug, 

 called by the French sassafras, (for reasons unknown to 

 Monardes), and "pavame" by the Indians from whom 

 the French obtained their information. Monardes (in 

 Clusius 7 version) adds that sassafras grows in Florida 

 in "maritime places," such as are neither too dry nor 

 too moist. It is especially plentiful near the harbors 

 of St. Helena and St. Matthews, forming whole 

 woods, which exhale such a fragrance (not true in 

 the experience of this writer), that the Spaniards 

 who first landed believed the tree to be the same as 

 the cinnamon tree of Ceylon. 



The illustration of the sassafras tree given by Mo- 

 nardes has been widely copied in the herbals of the 

 16th and 17th centuries, among which we name Dale- 

 champs (1586), (181), Joh. Bauhinus (Bauhin, 47) 



