706 SMILACE^. 



Sarsaparilla. This drug, he explains, has of late years been brought 

 from the newly found country of Peru, that it is in long whip-like roots, 

 growing from the stock of a sort of bramble resembling a vine, that the 

 Spaniards call it Zarza pan'illa, and that it is an excellent medicine. 



About the same period, sarsaparilla was described by Auger Ferrier/ 

 a physician of Toulouse, who states that in the treatment of syphilis, 

 which he calls Lues Hispanica, it is believed to be better than either 

 China root or Lignunfi sanctum. Girolamo Cardano of Milan, in a little 

 work called Be radice Gina et Sarza Parilia judicium,^ expresses similar 

 opinions. After so strong recommendations, the drug soon found its way 

 to the pharmaceutical stores ; we find it quoted for instance in 1563, in 

 the tariff of the " Apotheke" of the little town of Annaberg in Saxony.^ 

 We have also noticed " Sarsaparilla " in the Ricettario Fiorentino of 

 the year 1573.* Gerarde,^ who wrote about the close of the century, 

 states that the sarsaparilla of Peru is imported into England in abun- 

 dance. 



Collection of the Root — Mr. Richard Spruce, the enterprising 

 botanical explorer of the Amazon valley, has communicated to us the 

 following particulars on this subject, which we give in his own graphic 

 words : — 



" When I was at Santarem on the Amazon in 1849-50, where consi- 

 derable quantities of sarsaparilla are brought in from the upper regions 

 of the river Tapajoz, and again when on the Upper Rio Negro and 

 Uaupes in 1851-53, I often interrogated the traders about their criteria 

 of the good kinds of sarsaparilla. Some of them had bought their 

 stock of Indians of the forest, and had themselves no certain test of its 

 genuineness or of its excellence, beyond the size of the roots, the 

 thickest fetching the best price at Para. Those who had gathered 

 sarsaparilla for themselves were guided by the following characters : — 

 1. Many stems from a root. 2. Prickles closely set. 3. Leaves thin. — 

 The first character was (to them) alone essential, for in the species of 

 Smilax that have solitary stems, or not more than two or three, the 

 roots are so few as not to be worth grubbing up ; whereas the multicaul 

 species have numerous long roots, — three at least to each stem, — 

 extending horizontally on all sides. 



"In 1851, when I was at the falls of the Rio Negro, which are 

 crossed by the equator, nine men started from the village of St. Gabriel 

 to gather Salsa, as they called it, at the head of the river Cauaburis. 

 During their absence I made the acquaintance of an old Indian, who 

 told me that four years ago he had brought stools of Salsa from the 

 Cauaburis and had planted them in a tahocdl, — a clump of bamboos, 

 indicating the site of an ancient Indian village, — on the other side of 

 the falls, whither he invited me to go and witness the gathering of his 

 first crop of roots. On the 23rd March, I visited the tahocdl, and 

 found some half-dozen plants of a Smilax with very prickly stems, but 



^ De Pudendagra lue Hispanica, libri - Basilese, 1559, fol. 



duo, first published at Toulouse in 1553, and * FlUckiger, Documente (quoted at p. 404, 



many times reprinted. We have consulted note 7) 24. 



the Antwerp edition of 1564, with which * See Appendix. 



Cardano's work is printed. The latter is * Herhall, enlarged by Johnson, 1636. 



said to have first appeared in 1559. 859. 



