ON AN ARTICLE PURPO RTING TO BE JALAP. 
289 
ART. XL VI. — REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON AN AR- 
TICLE PURPORTING TO BE JALAP, NOW IN THE MAR- 
KET. 
(Read at the Pharmaceutical Meeting, January 2, 1843.) 
The Committee entrusted by the College of Pharmacy 
with the duty of investigating the properties of a certain 
article of false jalap recently brought into the New York 
market, hereby submit the following Report as the result of 
their examination. 
One of the members of your Committee, during a visit to 
New York city, procured a pound of this fictitious article, 
selected in a manner to present a fair sample of its general 
character, which, upon examination, was found to be made up 
of the following pieces: 
1st. A large spindle-shaped dried root, or rather tuber, 
flattened on one side, about six inches long and three wide, 
weighing six ounces. 
2d. The larger half of a similar tuber, transversely cut, 
forming a segment four inches in its largest diameter, weigh- 
ing three and a half ounces. 
3d and 4th. Two entire tubers, smaller in size, ovate, one 
of them kidney form, and pointed, weighing together about 
five ounces. 
A further description of this article is comprised under the 
following general features: 
It is light in weight compared with jalap; externally very 
rugose, not minutely so, like the jalap, but coarsely furrowed: 
it is of a light brown color, with dark shades of black occu- 
pying the cavities, through which are interspersed minute 
shining black specks. Its fracture is rough and uneven, and 
its interior surface presents a uniform, grayish-white, ligneous 
