308 
ON GELSEMLVUM SEMPERVIRENS. 
loss of muscular power, being, in fact, so completely prostrated 
as to be unable to move a limb or to raise the eye-lids, yet he 
could hear and could appreciate what was occurring around him. 
After some hours, during wmich his friends were watching him 
with much anxiety and little hope, he gradually recovered his 
muscular control, and was astonished to find that the fever had 
left him. Having ascertained from his servant what plant he 
had collected, he subsequently employed it successfully on his 
own plantation as well as among his neighbors. The history 
becoming known to a quackish physician, he prepared from 
it a nostrum called the " Electrical Febrifuge," in which it 
was disguised by oil of winter-green, (Eclectic Dispensatory, 
page 186.) 
The Gelseminum is not noticed by Dr. Griffith in his Medical 
Botany, nor in the recent edition of the United States Dispen- 
satory, and so far appears to have been used chiefly by the 
"Eclectic" practitioners of Cincinnati and other parts of the 
Western States. The accompanying description of the plant is 
taken partly from a specimen sent from Memphis, Tennessee, 
where, in common with other parts of the south-western States, 
it is cultivated as an ornamental garden plant. 
The Gelseminum bebngs to the natural order Apocyneas, so 
remarkable for the great activity of many of its genera, and the 
name of the genus, given by Jussieu, is one of the ancient 
names of the jassamine, and that of the species arises from its 
evergreen foliage. 
Gelseminum belongs to Pentandria Digynia cf Linnaeus, and 
to the natural order Apocyneas of Jussieu. 
G-eneric characters. — Regular, calyx five parted, (the sepals of 
this species being furnished with bract-like appendages) carolla 
funnel-form, border spreading, five lobed, nearly equal, capsule 
compressed, flat, two partible, two-celled, seeds flat and attached 
to the margins of the valves, (Eaton.) 
Specific characters The G. sempervirens is known at the 
South under the names yelloiv jasmine, wild jasmine and wood- 
bine. In Florida it flowers in March, and in Mississippi and 
Tennessee in May and June. Its stem is twining, smooth 
and glabrous ; its leaves are opposite, perennial, lanceolate, 
entire, dark green above, paler beneath ; with short petioles. 
