REPORT ON A NEW JALAP. 
223 
ART. XXXVI. — REPORT MADE TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY 
OF MEDICINE BY M. PLANCHE, IN THE NAME OF A 
COMMITTEE, UPON A NEW JALAP PROPOSED BY M. 
LE DANOIS AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR OFFICINAL JALAP. 
When any substance whatever appears in the drug market 
with a determined therapeutic destination, when it is calcu- 
lated, moreover, to take the place of a well known medicine, 
the use of which has been established by long experience, it 
is important to determine how far the new substance re- 
sembles, and in what it diners from, either in its composition or 
medicinal properties, that with which it is placed in compe- 
tition. This mode of proceeding, the most rational, the only 
one that can advance the Materia Medica, is that which 
the Committee has thought should be followed with respect 
to the new jalap brought from Mexico by M. Le Danois, 
and upon which the Minister of Public Instruction, in 
his letter of May 13th, has consulted the Academy. 
The new jalap, — presented by M. LeDanois, and which this 
naturalist has designated under the name of Convolvulus Ori- 
zabensis, from the name of the city of Orizaba, in the neigh- 
borhood of which the plant grows in abundance, — has already 
been mentioned in detail in the Histoire Jibregee des Drouges 
Simples of M. Guibourt, as well as in the Dictionnctire de 
Materie Medicale of MM. Merat and De Lens, Its bota- 
nical characters, compared with those of the Convolvulus 
officinalis, but with which we shall not at present meddle, 
have also been described in a notice by M. Gabriel Pelletan, 
published in 1834.* 
* The variety of jalap, introduced into the Philadelphia market, which 
has been described by Mr. Daniel B. Smith in his paper upon jalap, pub- 
lished in this Journal, p. 34, vol. ii., is undoubtedly the article here 
referred to. Of this Mr. Smith was aware ; as he traced the resemblance 
between it and the article under the name of male jalap, sent to France 
from Mexico by M. Le Danois. At the time the paper was written, 
no very specific description of the plant yielding it had reached this 
