PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS.

NUX VOMICA

This drug is the fruit of a tree (Strychnos nux-vomica) indig-enous to most parts of India, especially the coast districts, and isthought to have been introduced into medicine by the Arabians. Thenatives of India did not, however, value it, probably because of its ex-ceedingly energetic nature. Although the Hindoos of the present timeemploy it extensively, it is probable that they were not acquainted withit before its introduction into Germany, in the sixteenth Century. ItsEuropean employment was originally as a drug-shop poison, for thepurpose of killing animals and destructive birds, such as crows; itwas not until after the days of Parkinson (492), 1640, that its employ-ment in medicine began. The Pharmacopeia values nux preparationsby the amount of strychnine present, the Eclectics by quality, strych-nine being subordinated so as not to dominate the product unduly.

OPIUM

The discovery of the medical qualities of opium is lost in timesgone by. Theophrastus (633), the third Century B. C, mentions it.The poppy producing opium is (from a remote period) native to AsiaMinor and Central Asia. The early use of the decoction of the poppyhead, as well as the early use of opium, the product of the poppy, Papa-ver somniferum, antedates, as has been said, professional medicationand crept into home use as well as professional use at a very earlyperiod. The Welsh physicians of the seventeenth Century used a wineof poppy heads to produce sleep, and prepared pills from the juice ofthe poppy. Syrup of poppy was given a position in the first pharma-copeia, of the London College, 1618. Dioscorides (194) distinguishesbetween the juice of the poppy capsule, and an extract from the entireplant. Inasmuch as he describes how the capsule should be incisedand the juice collected, it is evident that he plainly refers to opium.Pliny (514) also devotes considerable Space to this drug. Celsus-(136), in the first Century, mentions it, and during the period of theRoman Empire it was known as a product of Asia Minor. It is sup-posed that the prohibition of wine by Mohammed led to the spreadingof the use of opium in some parts of Asia, the drug being then animport from Aden or Cambay. The Mohammedans introduced opiuminto India, it being first mentioned as a product of that country byBarbosa (39), who visited Calicut in 1511, its port of export thenbeing Aden or Cambay. The German traveler Kämpfer (349), whovisited Persia in 1685, describes the various kinds of opium then pro-duced, stating that it was customary to mix the drug with variousaromatics, such as nutmeg, cardamon, cinnamon, and mace, and evenwith ambergris. It was also sometimes colored red with cannabis in-dica, and was sometimes mixed with the strongly narcotic seeds ofstramonium. This writer could find no instance of the Turkish peopleof the present using opium in any form (388c). A description inbrief detail only of the many kinds of opium and the different qualitiesof opium, as well as its sophisticants and adulterants, is herein un-

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