200 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



purgatives. The purgative quality is accompanied with a bitterness, 

 which is often useful in restoring the tone of the stomach when it 

 bas been lost ; and for the most part its bitterness makes it sit better 

 on the stomach than many other purgatives do. Its operation joins 

 well with that of neutral laxatives; and both together operate in a 

 lesser dose than either of them would do singly. 



" Some degree of stipticity is always evident in this medicine, and 

 as this quality acts when that of the purgative has ceased, so in cases 

 of diarrhoea, when any evacuation is proper, rhubarb has been con- 

 sidered as the most proper means to be employed. I must however 

 remark here, that in many cases of diarrhoea, no further evacuation 

 than what is occasioned by the disease is necessary or proper. 

 The use of rhubarb in substance for keeping the belly regular, for 

 which it is frequently employed, is by no means proper, as the 

 astringent quality is ready to undo what the purgative had done ; 

 but I have found that the purpose mentioned may be obtained by 

 it, if the rhubarb is chewed in the mouth, and no more is swallowed 

 * than what the saliva has dissolved. And 1 must remark in this way 

 employed it is very useful to dyseptic persons. Analagous to this, 

 is the use of rhubarb in a solution, in which it appears to me that 

 the astringent quality is not so largely extracted as to operate so 

 powerfully as when the rhubarb was employed in substance." 



\Wilden. Woodv. Murray. Linn, 



SECTION XXIT. 



Ipecacuan. 

 Callicocea Ipecacuanha. Schreber.. 



The plant from which this valuable root is obtained was till 

 lately unknown; notwithstanding that the drug has been in common 

 use for considerably more than a century. It has been referred to 

 several different genera, as those of Paris, euphorbia, conicera, viola, 

 psycotria ; Mutis and the younger Linnaeus ascribed it to the last of 

 these. Schreber asserted it to be the root of a small plant which 

 he denominates Callicocea, a native of Brazil, and belonging to 

 Jussieu's order of rubiaceae. Woodville leaves the question unde- 

 cided, and gives it no reference whatever. Schreber has now been 

 ascertained to be correct. The plant was first accurately figured 

 and described in Vol. 6 of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society 



