CHIRONEA CENTAURIUM. 
69 
tions it usually acquires a greater height ;"* it is frequently met with 
in the neighbourhood of London, about Charlton and Combe 
Wood, flowering in July and August. 
The root is woody, fibrous and of a yellowish colour ; the stalk 
rises erect to about a foot in height, smooth, angular, generally 
simple, but sometimes with a few branches; the flowers are terminal, 
and produced in a corymbus or bunch ; the calyx a perianthum of 
one leaf, permanent, about half the length of the tube of the corolla, 
five-cleft, with the segments subulate and erect ; the corolla is of a 
pink colour, monopetalous, funnel-shaped, the tube cylindrical, 
striated and extremely thin, the limb is divided into five elliptical 
equal segments, spreading and slightly concave ; the filaments are 
thread-shaped, somewhat bent down, and furnished with oblong, 
twisted anthers, of a yellow colour ; the germen is oblong, fiUing the 
tube of the corolla ; the style is about half the length of the germen, 
sometimes bifid ; stigma clubbed, composed of two lips and villous ; 
capsule oblong, pointed, shining, covered by the tube of the corolla, 
divisible into two parts, with a cavity in each, containing numerous 
small, roundish, yellow seeds. We learn from Pliny ,t that centaury 
has its name KevT«vp/ov from Chiron the Centaur ; it was classed by 
Linn^us with the gentians, but more modern botanists have 
removed it to the genus Chironea, to which it appears more properly 
to belong, its botanical character exactly corresponding with the 
latter tribe of plants. 
Sensible Qualities, &c. This plant is almost inodorous, but 
has an extremely bitter and disagreeable taste, whence the ancients 
denominated it/eZ terrcB, or gall of the earth. The active parts of 
this plant are dissolved readily both by water and rectified spirit ; 
water takes up along with the bitter a large quantity of an insipid 
mucilaginous substance ; rectified spirit dissolves little more than the 
pure bitter part, which appears to be resin. Hence, on inspissating 
the two solutions to the same consistence, the watery extract proves 
much less bitter than the spirituous, and its quantity above four 
times greater. 
Medical Properties and Uses. Centaury is justly esteemed 
an eflScacious bitter ; it is tonic, stomachic and antiseptic,! and in 
* Curtis, Flora Londinensis. 
+ riiii. lib. XXV. c. G, p. Co5. 
X Vide Pringlc, Diseases of the Armj, App. p. 60, 
