I 



in Avasfce biLshy placas in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, the Greek Islands, 

 extending northward to the Crimea and Southern Russia, but appears 

 to be wanting in Northern Africa, Italy, and in all the western parts 

 of the Mediterranean basin. 



History — The dried milky juice of the scammony plant has been 

 kno^vn as a medicine from verj^ ancient times. Theophrastns in the 3rd 

 century B.C. was acquainted with it; it was likewise familiar to 

 Dioscorid&s, Pliny, CelsiLS, and Rufus of Ephesus, each of whom has 

 given some account of the manner in which it was collected. Scam- 

 mony used then also to be called Diagrydion, from the Greek word 

 SuKpv; t<3ar. The mediaeval Arabian physicians also knew scammony 

 and the plant from which it is derived. The drug was used in Britain 

 in the 10th and 11th centuries, and would appear to be one of the 

 medicines recommended to King Alfred the Great, by Helias, patriarch 

 of Jerusalem.^ It is repeatedly named in the medical writings in use 

 prior to the Norman conquest (a.d. 1066), in one of which directions 

 are given for recognizing the goodness of the drug by the white 

 emulsion it produces when wetted. 



The botanists of the 16th and 17th centuries, as Brunfels, Gesner, 

 Matthiolus, Dodonaeus, and the Bauhins, described and figured the 

 plant partly under the name of Scammonia syriaca. The collecting 

 of the drug was well described by Russell, an Ejiglish physician of 

 Aleppo (1752), whose account^ is accompanied by an excellent figure 

 representing the plant and the means of obtaining its juice. 



Scammony was formerly distinguished by the names Aleppo and 

 Sniyvna, the former sort being twice or thrice as costly as the latter ; 

 at the present day Aleppo scammony has quite lost its pre-eminence. 



LfOcalities producing the drug — Scammony is collected in Asia 

 Minor, from Brussa and Boli in the north, to Macri and Adalia in the 

 south, and eastward as far as Angora. But the most productive 

 localities within this area are the valley of the Mendereh, south 

 of Smyrna : and the districts of Kirkagach and Demirjik, north of that 

 town. The neighbourhood of Aleppo likewise aflfords the drug. A 

 little is obtained further south in Syria, from the woody hills and 

 valleys about the lake of Tiberias and Mount Carmel. 



Production — The scammony plant has a long woody root, which 

 throws ofi" downwards a few lateral branches, and produces from its 

 knotty summit numerous twining stems which are persistent and 

 woody at the base. In plants of three or four years old, the root may 

 be an inch or more in diameter ; in older specimens it sometimes 

 acquires a diameter of three or four inches. In length, it Ls from two 

 to three feet, according to the depth of soil in which it grows. Wlien 

 the root is wounded, there exudes a milky juice which dries up to a 



^ Such is the opinion expressed by the (Syrian and Persian) drugs were included 



Rev. O. Cockayne. The letter of Helias to in the lost part of the patriarch's letter, 



Alfred is imperfect, and mentions only bal- — See Leechdorm, Wortcunning and Star- 



sam, petroleum, theriaka, and a white stone craft of Early England, edited by Coc- 



used as a charm. But from the reference kayne (Master of the Rolls Series), voL ii. 



to these four articles in another part of the pages xxiv. 289. 175, also 273. 281. 



MS., in connection with scammony, ammo- ^Medical Observations and Iiuitiiries, i, 



niacum, tragacanth, ' and galbanum, there (1757) 12. 

 is ground for believing that the latter 



