124 Selections from the Correspondence of 



where the learned languages are little understood. 3d. It may 

 set many who do not understand Latin, the ladies especially, on 

 amusing themselves with this study, and thereby procure more 

 assistance in bringing this knowledge to perfection. The ladies 

 are at least as well fitted for this study as the men, by their nat- 

 ural curiosity, and the accuracy and quickness of their sensations. 

 It would give them means of employing many idle hours, both 

 usefully and agreeably. As I cannot doubt that Mrs. Collinson 

 has the same taste of pleasures with you, I am fond to believe 

 that she will with pleasure, save you some trouble in such a 

 work as I propose. No doubt your correspondents inform you 

 of the uses of several plants. I wish something of that may be 

 added ; for as most of the plants are new to us, the uses of them 

 must be so likewise. Indeed a plant may be long known, and 

 the use but a late discovery. 



This brings to my memory what I have read in Allen's Lon- 

 don Dispensatory, under the word Ipecacuanha, of a root from Ma- 

 ryland, which in most of the shops had been substituted in place 

 of the true Ipecacuanha, the use of which was forbid by the Col- 

 lege of Physicians, on Sir Hans Sloane's information, that it was 

 a kind of Apocynum. No doubt the college was in the right to 

 forbid the substituting of one plant in place of another ; but I 

 am not well satisfied with the reasons given by Sir Hans, as de- 

 livered in that book; viz. that it is a poisonous plant, being 

 a kind of Apocynum. Now to this I object, that it is doubtful 

 whether any of the plants which are now known by the name 

 of Apocynum, be really the Apocynum of Dioscorides, by whose 

 authority alone our Apocynums are branded, so far as I know, 

 with the character of poisons. Again : supposing Dioscorides' 

 plant to be truly an Apocynum, it does not follow that all the 

 species in America ranked under that genus are in like manner 

 poisonous. Dioscorides says, that his Apocynum has a very offen- 

 sive smell : I know an American species whose flowers smell 

 very agreeably ; and may not their virtues likewise differ as 

 much? I think we have strong reasons to judge, that the kind 

 of Apocynum substituted in place of Ipecacuanha cannot be poi- 

 sonous, otherwise it could not so generally have taken its place. 

 Sir Hans likewise affirms, that the roots of a kind of Apocynum 

 are commonly vended in New Spain for Ipecacuanha; if so, I 

 doubt the greatest quantity of Ipecacuanha in the shops is from 



