THE 
AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
JULY,  1859. 
OBSERVATIONS  ON  ANAGALLIS  ARVENSIS. 
By  Joseph  Augustus  Heintzelman. 
That  large  portion  of  our  present  Materia  Medica  which  is 
drawn  from  the  vegetable  kingdom,  is  composed  chiefly  of  plants, 
which  once  bore  a  despised  name,  but  the  discovery  of  their 
merits  has  won  for  them  a  more  honorable  position.  But  who 
can  doubt  that  plants  are  now  growing,  in  field  or  forest,  which 
as  yet  unknown,  are  not  less  worthy  of  regard  than  those  we 
most  value  ?  And  in  a  liberal,  experimenting  age  like  this, 
we  may  confidently  hope  that  numerous  discoveries  will  be  made 
in  this  department,  and  we  may  expect  that  a  hospitable 
hearing  will  be  granted  to  one  which  claims  to  possess  useful 
properties,  though  it  bears  so  humble  a  name  as  Ckickweed. 
It  is  well  known  that  a  great  obscurity  yet  prevails  in  relation 
to  the  nature  and  the  existence  of  hydrophobia,  a  disease  which 
is  still  doubted,  and  even  denied  by  many  distinguished  gentle- 
men of  the  profession,  and  for  which  disease  no  infallible  and 
reliable  remedial  agent  has  been  found.  Therefore  I  do  not 
enter  into  discussion  about  it,  but  relate  at  once  the  particulars 
which  have  induced  me  to  make  this  common  and  little  esteemed 
plant  the  subject  of  a  thesis,  and  at  the  same  time  to  in- 
vestigate its  active  constituents    and  peculiar  princiles. 
About  a  year  ago  one  of  our  city  newspapers  reprinted  from 
an  old  journal  of  the  Legislature  of  Pennsylvania,  preserved  in 
the  State  Library,  of  which  the  contents  were  published,  as  fol- 
lows : 
"Dauphin  County,  Londonderry  Township,  February  18,  1802. 
Sir  :~A  medicine  of  the  utmost  importance  to  mankind,  prepared  from  an 
