ON ASARUM CANADENSE. 
183 
even larger; the external covering is brownish and wrinkled, 
the internal substance is white, hard, and brittle. Occasionally 
short fragments of radicles are attached. It comes either in 
mass, or in square packages, derived from the Shakers; when 
under the last form, the leaves are usually attached, and then 
it is liable to the objection common to all the articles obtained 
from this source, viz., the tendency to mouldiness from the 
necessity of putting them up when but partially dry, in order 
to give to the packages their degree of compactness by pres- 
sure. 
The taste is agreeably aromatic and slightly bitter, being 
of a mixed character. The smell is aromatic, but less so in 
the dry than in the fresh state. All portions of the plant 
partake, more or less, of these properties. 
MEDICAL HISTORY. 
Wild ginger is spoken of by Corntjtus as affording a 
grateful potion, when the roots are steeped in wine. Lemery, 
in his Dictionnaire Universel des Drogues Simples, alludes 
its substitution for ginger by the aborigines of America; 
his work was published in 1733. Dr. Benjamin Smith Bar- 
ton, in his Collections states, but whether from his own ex- 
perience we are not informed, that the expressed juice of the 
leaves is emetic, and that likewise the leaves themselves are 
errhine. We are chiefly indebted to Drs. Bigelow and 
William P. C. Barton for the more full elucidation of the 
medical properties of this plant. 
medical properties. 
In these, like its congeners, it is stimulant and tonic, 
as would at once be evident, not only from the sensible pro- 
perties of the root, but from the knowledge we now possess 
as regards its ingredients. Of course, like all other articles 
of the same class, the effects upon the animal economy must 
vary according to the mode of exhibition. Thus its sudorific 
power will be manifested by exhibition in warm effusion, and 
perhaps, in large quantities it will, in this form, prove emetic; 
