VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 345 



including the whole of China, Annam, Cochin-China, the 

 Philippines, and the islands of the Malaysian Archipelago. 

 The Chinese name, "dog's spine," refers to the form of the 

 root, which suggests the appearance of a cadaverous dog with 

 its spine showing, and especially the kind covered witn yel- 

 lowish root filaments suggesting the ordinary, nearly starved 

 Chinese wouk, with its bristly hair. There is some confusion 

 of this with other kinds of ferns ; but not so much as is usually 

 the case. The drug, as it has appeared in the European 

 markets, consists of the stipes of the fern so thickly covered 

 with golden-brown hairs as to suggest the skin of some animal. 

 The native names under which this appeared were penghawar 

 djambi and pakoe kidang. According to the authors of the 

 Dutch Pharmacopoeia, this plant is identical with the so-called 

 Agnus ScythicHS^ or Scythian lamb^ which in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries was regarded as a sort of plant- 

 animal, springing from a seed, attached to the earth by a root 

 like a plant, while it had flesh and blood like an animal, and 

 fed upon the herbs which surrounded it until they were all 

 gone, after which it starved to death, because it could not move 

 from its place. Adam and Eve were said to have been aston- 

 ished on seeing this vegetable lamb in the Garden of Eden. 



In Chinese medicine the drug is considered strengthening 

 to the spine, antirheumatic, stimulating to the liver, kidneys, 

 and male generative organs, and is recommended as an old 

 man's remedy. General tonic properties are also ascribed to it. 

 In Europe the hairy filaments from the stipes were recommended 

 as a hesmostatic in wounds, and this use is also mentioned in 

 the Appendix to the Pentsao. Their action seems to be purely 

 mechanical. 



POLYPODIUM FORTUNEI.— -i-^IKKu-sui-pu), 624. 

 The name of this was originally ^ ^ (Hou-chiang), but the 

 Emperor Kaiyuen (713 A.D.), because he considered it capable 

 of mending broken bones, commanded that the former name 

 should be given to it. It grows in the shade of trees, about 

 the roots and on stony ground. The rhizome, 11 25, is said to 

 somewhat resemble ginger, and is filamentous. Its taste is bit- 

 ter and cooling, and it checks hemmorrhage and heals wounds. 



