NOMENCLATURE,  ETC.,  IN  THE  MATERIA  MEDICA,  U.  S.  P.  523 
Among  the  drugs  derived  from  the  natural  order  Compositoe, 
we  have  flowers  with  the  officinal  names  of  Anthemis,  Matri- 
caria, Arnica  and  Carthamus.  The  first  two  consist  of  the  entire 
heads,  the  third  is  composed  of  the  heads  from  which  frequently 
the  involucre  has  been  removed,  and  the  last  is  merely  the  florets, 
or  rather  the  corollas  of  the  individual  flowers. 
The  fruits  figure  in  our  Pharmacopoeia  under  the  names  of 
fruit,  unripe  fruit,  dried  fruit,  fruit  deprived  of  the  rind,  pre- 
served fruit,  unripe  capsule,  ripe  caps  ale,  unripe  berry,  ripe 
berry  and  perhaps  strobile.  I  am  inclined  in  favor  of  keeping 
aloof  in  our  Pharmacopoeia  from  the  quarrels  of  botanists  in 
regard  to  the  adoption  and  the  precise  meaning  of  certain  terms, 
and  in  this  instance  to  define  all  drugs  of  this  class  as  the  fruits, 
leaving  the  use  of  the  other  terms  for  commentaries  and  com- 
mentators. If  the  Pharmacopoeia,  however,  chooses  to  adopt  a 
certain  botanical  terminology  for  defining  the  officinal  fruits,  the 
system  ought  to  be  carried  out.  We  would  then  have  to  place 
capsicum,  uva  passa,  diospyros  and  colocynthis  amongst  the 
berries,  and  cardamomum  amongst  the  capsules  ;  prunum  and 
rhus  glabrum  would  have  to  be  called  drupes  ;  a  name  (cremocarp 
or  diakene)  would  have  to  be  adopted  for  the  officinal  fruits  of 
umbelliferae,  and  juniperus  and  ficus  would  have  to  receive 
names,  a  courtesy  accorded  to  hops,  with  which  they  agree  in  the 
fact  of  not  being  true  fruits. 
It  would  also  become  necessary  to  adopt  for  cassia  fistula  one 
of  the  names  proposed  for  the  cassia  fruits,  since  they  evidently 
differ  from  the  ordinary  legume  by  their  transverse  partitions  and 
their  indehiscence.  Tamarinds  always  consist  of  the  fruit  entirely 
deprived  of  the  pericarp,  fragments  of  which  are  sometimes  pre- 
sent merely  as  an  accidental  admixture.  Hordeum  is  a  fruit, 
not  seed,  decorticated  to  such  an  extent  that  the  embryo  is  re- 
moved and  merely  the  albumen  remains  with  a  portion  of  the 
integuments  of  the  fruit  and  seed  in  the  one-sided  groove. 
After  the  beautiful  researches  of  Tulasne,  (Annal.  des  Sciences 
Nat.  Botan.  xx,  1853),  it  seems  decidedly  wrong  to  define  ergot 
as  the  deceased  seed  of  rye,  while  in  reality  it  is  a  fungus  (Cla- 
viceps  purpurea,  TuL),  in  a  certain  state  of  development  growing 
from  the  diseased  ovary. 
