RADIX SARSAPARILLiE. 703 



the seeds, a very slight turbidity, or an insignificant precipitate is 

 observed. Yet on addition of sulphuric, or nitric, or hydrochloric acid, 

 an abundant precipitate of a beautiful yellow is at once produced. This 

 experiment succeeds with a few seeds, either entire or powdered ; it 

 may be conveniently applied for the detection of colchicum in any pre- 

 paration. We have ascertained that the yellow precipitate can be 

 obtained also with the other parts of the plant. If the yellow compound 

 is decomposed by sulphuretted hydrogen, the fi.ltrate, after due concen- 

 tration, now precipitates immediately on addition of the iodohydrorgy- 

 rate, yet still more abundantly in presence of a mineral acid. 



The seeds contain traces of gallic acid, much sugar and fatty oil. Of 

 the last we obtained 66 per cent, by exhausting the dried seed with 

 ether. The oil concreted at — 8° C. Rosenwasser (1877) obtained 

 84 per cent, of the oil. 



Uses — The same as those of the corm. 



SMILACE^. 



RADIX SARSAPARILLiE. 



Radix Sarzce vd Sarsce ; Sarsaparilla ; F. Racine de Salsejxireille ; 



G. Sarsajmj'illwurzel. 



Botanical Orgin — Sarsaparilla is afforded by several plants of the 

 genus Sinilax, indigenous to the northern half of South America, and 

 the whole of Central America as far as the southern and western coast- 

 lands of Mexico. 



These plants are woody climbers, often ascending lofty trees by the 

 strong tendrils which spring from the petiole of the leaf Their stems 

 are usually angular, armed with stout prickles, and thrown up from a 

 large woody rhizome. The medicinal species inhabit swampy tropical 

 forests, which are extremely deleterious to the health of Europeans, and 

 can only be explored amid great difficulties. This circumstance taken 

 in connexion with the facts that the plants are dioecious, that their scan- 

 dent habit often renders their flowers and fruits (produced at different 

 seasons) inaccessible, and that their leaves vary exceedingly in form,^ 

 explains why we are but very imperfectly acquainted with the botanical 

 sources of sarsaparilla. 



It is not too much to assert that the saraaparilla plant of no district 

 in Tropical America is scientifically well known. The species moreover, 

 to which the drug is assigned, have for the most part been founded upon 

 characters that are totally insufficient, so that after an attentive study 

 of herbarium specimens, we are obliged to regard as still doubtful several 

 of the plants that have been named by previous writers. 



Having made these preliminary remarks, we will enumerate the 

 plants to which the sarsaparilla of commerce has been ascribed. 



^ The commou Sinilax aspera L., of known only by a few leafy scraps preserved 



Southern Europe, is a plant which presents in herbaria, it would assuredly have been 



such diversity of foliage, that if like its referred to several species, 

 congeners of Tropical America, it were 



