Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
February,  1901.  J 
Reviezvs. 
99 
It  is  somewhat  after  Dragendorff's  "  Heilpflanzen  der  verschie- 
denen  Volker  und  Zeiten,"  Stuttgart,  Enke,  1898,  while  the  owners 
of  Dr.  Fred  Hoffmann's  list  of  popular  names  of  household  remedies, 
chiefly  of  the  vegetable  kingdom  ("Pharmac.  Rundschau"),  will  find  an 
extension  to  that  list  in  Greshoft's  book. 
The  author  is  mindful  of  the  fact  that  the  use  of  fishpoisons  is  not 
confined  to  such  races  as  we  are  pleased  to  call  savages,  and 
produces,  to  illustrate  this,  a  Dutch  newspaper  article,  dated  Octo- 
ber, 1898,  wherein  we  are  told  that  fishermen  in  our  large  rivers 
are  making  such  good  use  of  a  fishpoison  to  ply  their  trade  as  the 
most  lazy  "black"  could  not  improve  upon.  Heaps  of  dead  fishes 
sometimes  of  50  kilogrammes  bulk  (weight),  accumulate  on  the  bor- 
ders, killed  by  little  pill  (used  as  a  lure)  made  from  bread,  powdered 
seeds  of  Cocculus  indicus  and  whiskey,  of  which  bait  the  fishes  are 
very  fond. 
The  whole  book  breathes  a  spirit  of  stirring  individual  research 
such  as  emanated  from  "  Die  Pflanzenstoffe"  of  both  Husemanns  in 
its  time. 
I  noted  an  omission  on  page  20,  which  I  might  be  allowed  to 
supply. 
Baillon,  "  Histoire  des  Plantes,"  had  stated  the  crushed  leaves 
of  different  Viola  species  exhale  an  odor  of  hydrocyanic  acid.  Dr. 
Greshoff  did  not  find  HCN,  but  detected  an  odor  of  methyl  sali- 
cylate (the  well-known  popular  wintergreen-oil  odor).  From  a 
special  investigation  on  fresh  plants  in  blossom,  he  concluded  the 
absence  of  free  salicylic  acid. 
Turning  to  "  Viola  tricolor,"  Inaugural  Diss.,  von  Henry 
Kraemer,  aus  Chicago  (our  editor !),  we  read  that  "Manderlin" 
worked  this  problem  out  in  Dragendorff's  laboratory,  in  the  year 
1 88 1.  Mandelin's  process  of  isolating  salicylic  acid  from  Viola 
tricolor  (the  whole  plant)  excludes^he  said,  the  formation  of  sali- 
cylic acid.  It  must  be  present,  in  the  plant,  free,  uncombined.  He 
found  it  in  the  roots  of  other  Viola  species,  too,  in  weighable  quan- 
tities— 0-14  per  cent,  in  the  plant  above  the  earth,  0*05  per  cent, 
in  the  root.  Those  results  have  been  verified  by  Griffith  and  Con- 
rad (1884).  There  must  be  an  enzyme  present  in  the  plant 
which  splits  up  a  certain  compound,  since  the  methyl  salicylate  odor 
is  not  to  be  mistaken,  and  agreed  upon  by  all  writers,  exclud- 
ing the  wrong  information  from  Baillon.    The  latest  authority  on 
