PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS.

to Japan, North and South America, the Falkland Islands, and evento the Cape of Good Hope, being so widely distributed as to have led,naturally, to its therapeutic reputation in common life in all parts ofthe world. The spores of lycopodium have been used in domestictherapy as an application to fresh wounds, and have thus a reputationas an absorbent styptic. Official in pharmacy in the middle of theseventeenth Century, the English druggists seem not to have includedthe powder in their list of drugs before 1692, nor has it been officialin any of the London pharmacopeias. Lycopodium is employed inHomeopathic and Eclectic medication, and in connection with shellacand earthy salts is also used in large quantity in the making of differ-ent colored signal fires, as well as those for evening celebrations.

MALTUM

The time of the introduction of malt (Hordeum distichon) ante-dates the lore of systematic medication. Germinated barley, kiln-dried,has been employed in the making of malted liquors since a very earlydate, and malt liquors have been in domestic use, both as a beverageand an extract, for a very long period. The introduction of malt intothe pharmacopeia resulted from the empirical use of the semi-pro-prietary "Extracts of Malt," which a few years after the middle of thelast Century became populär in domestic as well as in professional use.Its introduction to medicine is, however (as with many other sub-stances of merit or otherwise), due largely to the efforts of manufac-turing pharmacists.

MANNA

Manna of commerce is supplied by the manna ash, Fraxinusornus, of the Southern Tyrol, Italy, Switzerland, Asia Minor, and themountainous islands of the Mediterranean and countries adjacent. InCentral Europe it grows as an ornamental tree, the foliage being ingreat Variation in shape of leaflets, and the fruit diverse in form. Ac-cording to Flückiger and Hanbury (240), previous to the fifteenthCentury the manna of Europe was imported from the East, and wasnot derived from the manna ash. In early days manna was a naturalexudation, much scarcer than at present, and much more expensive,the increase in the production being now artificially increased and alsomarked by a decrease in quality. During the sixteenth Century theplan referred to above was devised of incising the trunk and branchesto produce a more copious supply of the gum, thus largely increasingthe amount of the market supply, although the method was strenu-ously opposed by legislative enactments. The name Gibelmanna,manna-tnountain, by which an eminence of the Madonia ränge ofmountains in Sicily is known, indicates that this mountain furnishedmanna during the days of the Saracens in Sicily. Manna has beenused as a domestic remedy from all time as a gentle laxative, and, asmentioned in our article on Spigelia, is supposed, in domestic medicinein this country, to modify the griping qualities of a mixture of senna

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