PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS.

and as a stomachic remedy by the natives of the afore-named and othercountries since the date of the discovery of the remedy, and probablyfrom all time preceding. Pepper was mentioned by Theophrastus(633), who described two kinds. Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514)both give it a place in their writings. As early as 64 A. D. it wasmentioned as occurring on the Malabar Coast. The Romans at Alex-andria, A. D. 176, levied on it a duty. The Arabian authors of theMiddle Ages, twelfth and fourteenth centuries, described it fairly. Inthe European countries of the Middle Ages pepper was consideredthe most important of all spices, being the foundation of much of thewealth of Venice and Genoa during their greatest commercial activity.It has been used as a medium of exchange when money was scarce,and when Rome was besieged by the Goths the ransom included threethousand pounds of pepper. In fact the value placed upon pepper inthe records of the past is in itself an indication of its importance tothe people who used it.

PODOPHYLLUM

This handsome plant, Podophyllum peltatum, known also as man-drake, or may apple, is one of the most attractive features of the earlyspring in North America, resisting with remarkable efficiency the ag-gressive inroads of the agriculturist. It was used by the North Ameri-can Indians, the Cherokees employing the fresh juice of the root fordeafness, and the Wyandottes made a drastic cathartic, from which thedrug's harsher qualities were removed by roasting. The once cele-brated "Indian doctors," Peter Smith (605) and others, employed theroot as an escharotic, in which direction it came into early veterinarypractice. The early American physicians and writers on medicinepraised its qualities as a purgative, its active cathartic nature havingbeen known, as has been said, from the days of the Indians. Thevegetable Substitute for the once populär antimonial plaster used sofreely by "Regulär" physicians was the Compound Tar Plaster of theEclectics. This contained podophyllum, phytolacca, and sanguinaria.

PRUNUM

The cultivated varieties of the prune tree (prunus or prunes) arebelieved to descend from a wild prune native to Greece, the shores ofthe Black Sea, and the Cäucasus, reaching even into Persia. Pliny(514) records the fact that one of the numerous varieties of the plumtree known in his day afforded a laxative fruit. The pulp of theprune has been used in domestic medicine as well as by the medicalprofession, parallelling (or following) the efforts of those concernedin early medication. The pulp of the French prune was an ingredientof the once celebrated Lenitive Electuary. History does not recordthe beginning of the use of this fruit in the confections formerly sopopulär in domestic medicine.

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