SARRACENIA PURPUREA. 593 
they may be, the peculiar action of the medicine is such that 
very seldom is a scar left to tell the story of the disease. 
I will not enter upon a physiological analysis now; it will 
be sufficient for my present purpose to state that it cures 
the disease as no other medicine does—not by stimulating 
functional reagency, but by actual contact with the virus in 
the blood, rendering it inert and harmless, and this I gather 
from the fact that if either vaccine or variolous matter be 
washed with the infusion of the Sarracenia, they are deprived 
of their contagious properties. The medicine, at the same 
time, is so mild to the taste that it may be mixed largely 
with tea or coffee, as l have done, and given to connoisseurs 
in these beverages to drink, without their being aware of the 
admixture. 
Strange, however, to say, it is scarcely two years since 
science and the medical world were utterly ignorant of this 
great boon of Providence; and it would be dishonorable in 
me not to acknowledge that had it not been for the discretion 
of Mr. John Thomas Lane, of Lanespark, county Tipperary, 
Ireland, late of Her Majesty's Imperial Customs of Nova 
Scotia, to whom the Mecmac Indians had given the plant, 
the world would not now be in possession of the secret. 
No medical man before me had ever put this medicine upon 
trial, but in 1861, when the whole province of Nova Scotia 
was in a state of panic, and patients were dying in the 
hospitals at the rate of 12| per cent., from May to August, 
Mr. Lane, in the month of May, placed the Sarracenia in my 
hands, to decide upon its merits; and after my trials then 
and since, I have been convinced of its astonishing efficacy. 
The Indian cup is found in swamps and moss bogs. Its 
capacious globular receptacles are generally filled with cool, 
bland water. The cups are lined with bristles, pointing 
downwards, that entangle the flies that come to drink, so 
that few escape drowning. It is a very curious and remark¬ 
able family of plants, exclusively North American, and not 
to be met with west of the Alleghanies. The leaves take the 
form of a long bulbous tube or funnel, like the bowl of a 
tobacco pipe, terminatitg with a hood-shaped appendage, not 
unlike an Indian squaw’s cap. The flowers, with their hard, 
involuted, crenate calyx, and fine sessile segments, like the 
yellow water-lily, deep-crimson stigmata, and corresponding 
stamina, in form and appearance are very remarkable. All 
of the tribe inhabit marshy grounds. The Sarracenia purpurea 
is the most common species, and, like all the beautiful things 
of Providence, widely diffused from Hudson’s Bay to the 
Carolina Northern State. The root consists of numerous 
38 
XXXV. 
