326 stonecrop. 



Qualities. — Stonecrop is inodorous, but in its recent state it has a 

 warm, pungent, acrimonious taste, like that of Biting Persicaria. The 

 expressed juice contains these properties in a high degree ; chemical ana- 

 lysis, however, has not made us acquainted with its constituent principles. 

 Its active matter is evidently of a volatile kind, coming over in great part 

 in distillation with water, and being scarcely perceptible in the dried herb, 

 but is not destroyed in the fresh plant by long continued decoction ; thus 

 differing from the acrid principle of the Ranunculus tribe. According to 

 Bergius *, the aqueous infusion is yellowish, not unlike tea, inodorous, with 

 a slightly acrid and nauseous taste, and is not affected in colour by sulphate 

 of iron. 



Poisonous Properties.— Orfila has shown that this plant deserves to 

 be ranked among the less potent of the acrid poisons. He gave four ounces 

 and a half of the expressed juice to two dogs and tied the oesophagus ; they 

 soon made efforts to vomit, and after some hours became much dejected ; 

 one of them was totally insensible, and exhibited slight convulsive move- 

 ments of the paws previous to death. The mucous membrane of the 

 stomach was excessively red, the lungs were reddish and more dense than 

 natural. 



Accidents to the human subject are not very likely to occur from this 

 plant ; and if too much of it were swallowed, it would probably be soon 

 ejected by vomiting. If such should occur, however, the same remedies 

 will be required as for Crowfoot and other acrid vegetables already 

 described. 



Medicinal Properties and Uses. — This plant, when ingested, 

 generally produces vomiting and purgation, and its exciting 

 action may be consecutively directed to different organs and 

 produce different secondary effects ; hence it may prove diuretic, 

 aperitive, febrifuge, detersive, &c. With the view of exerting 

 one or other of these properties, Stonecrop has been used in 

 various diseases, particularly dropsy, scurvy, intermittents, 

 epilepsy, and chorea. In dropsical accumulations it is only 

 admissible when the patient's constitutional powers are adequate 

 to its purgative operation. Below f, a Swedish physician, gave 

 it boiled in milk or beer in scurvy, and the latter decoction, 

 associated with honey of roses and alum, he also used as a 

 gargle for inflammation of the gums, and to cleanse ulcers which 

 have supervened to scurvy ; he also applied cataplasms of the 

 boiled herb upon the joints to rectify that contraction of the 

 limbs which sometimes takes place in scorbutic persons. In 



* Mat. Med. torn. i. p. H7C. 



f Below, in Misc. nat. cur. Dec. i. Ann. 6. Obs. 22. p. 40. 



