PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS.

as well as being most satisfactory in acute cystitis. The Medical News,August io, 1881, commended a decoction of com silk in the afore-named directions, and in the Therapeutic Gazette (634), February,1881, Professor L. W. Benson reported that in his practice the remedyacted very favorably and kindly. Following this, various contributionssppeared in the foreign medical Journals, one by Dr. Dufau in theLondon Medical Rccord, spoke of it as a little known, newly intro-duced remedy. Many commendatory articles followed this in Euro-pean medical Journals, which fact, together with the increased demandon American manufacturing pharmacists, led to its introduction intothe Pharmacopeia of the United States.

ZINGIBER

Ginger, Zingiber officinale, is a reed-like plant native to Asia,but has been introduced to most tropical countries, and grows freely insome parts of the West Indies, South America, Western Africa,Australia, etc. It was known to the ancients, being extensively usedby the Greeks and Romans, who considered it an Arabian productbecause it came to them, among spices from India, by way of the RedSea. It was an article of common import from the East to Europefrom the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries A. D., and probably fora long period preceding that time. Ginger was taxed as a spiee, incommon with pepper, cloves, galangal, cubebs, etc. It was frequentlynamed in the Anglo-Saxon domestic works on medicine of the eleventhCentury, and was used by the Welsh physicians (507) of the thirteenthand fourteenth centuries, being then next to pepper in common use.Marco Polo (518) observed it in China and India about 1280-90. Infact, ginger has been a spiee and a domestic remedy from the earliestrecords, being extensively employed both as a spiee and as an aro-matic stomachic. It is still a populär domestic remedy as well asa favorite with many physicians.

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