REMARKS  ON  TARAXACUM  ROOT. 
337 
REMARKS  ON  TARAXACUM  ROOT. 
By  Professor  Bentley. 
Professor  Bentley  said  that  he  was  very  glad  that  the  subject 
of  Taraxacum  Root,  upon  which  several  valuable  papers  had  al- 
ready appearedin  the  Pharmaceutical  J rournal,  had  been  again  in- 
troduced to  the  Members  of  the  Society  by  a  practical  pharmaceu- 
tist ;  for  when  he  reflected  upon  its  enormous  consumption,  and  the 
unsatisfactory  state  of  our  present  knowledge  in  many  particulars 
respecting  it,  he  thought  it  was  very  desirable  that  those  who  had 
experimented  upon  it  should  make  known  the  results  of  their 
investigations. 
He  then  proceeded  to  remark  upon  the  best  time  for  collect- 
taraxacum  root  for  use  in  medicine.  He  said  he  found  that  Mr. 
Hills,  like  other  pharmaceutical  chemists  who  had  written  upon 
it,  had  indicated  the  latter  end  of  October,  the  month  of  Novem- 
ber, and  the  commencement  of  December,  as  the  best  periods 
for  its  collection ;  but  so  far  as  his  experience  went,  which  had 
already  been  published  in  the  Journal  some  years  since,  (see 
Pharmaceutical  Journal,  vol.  xiv.,  p.  260),  and  which  he  had 
for  the  last  seven  years  alluded  to  in  his  lectures,  he  believed 
that  those  were  not  the  best  months  for  the  purpose.  The  rea- 
sons for  thus  collecting  the  root  at  the  above  times  were — first, 
that  its  expressed  juice  was  then  richest  in  solid  constituents, 
and  thus  yielded  a  larger  amount  of  extract  than  at  other  periods  ; 
and  secondly,  the  more  uniform  and  pleasing  appearance,  and 
less  deliquescent  nature,  of  the  extract  then  obtained.  He  then 
remarked  that  it  was  without  doubt  true,  as  shown  by  Mr. 
Squire  and  others,  that  dandelion  root  was  in  those  months 
richest  in  solid  constituents,  but  it  by  no  means  followed  from 
this  that  it  was  at  the  same  time  in  the  most  active  state  for 
medicinal  use  ;  for  its  value  as  a  medicine  most  certainly  did 
not  depend  solely  upon  the  amount  of  solid  constituents  it  con- 
tained, but  principally,  if  not  entirely,  upon  the  presence  of 
a  bitter  principle,  which  had  been  termed  taraxacine.  One  of 
the  best  evidences,  therefore,  of  the  value  of  taraxacum  and  its 
fitness  for  medicinal  use,  would  be  its  taste  at  different  periods ; 
and  here  he  could  speak  positively,  as  he  had  repeatedly  tasted 
it  in  the  several  months  of  the  year,  and  had  arrived  at  the  fol- 
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