834

Materia Medica.

PART II.

e, or a

ex-

scale : the gefmen is ovate, with a slender style and four-cleftstigma: the fruit is a small, round, black, four-seeded berry,about the size of a pea, compressed on one side.*

These berries are said to be often mixed with those of theblack-berried alder and of the dog-berry tree; but as the buck-thorn berry has four seeds, while the others have only two andone, it can be easily distinguished.

dualities. — The odour of these berries is faint and unplea-sant, the taste bitterish, acrid, and nauseous. They are verysucculent, and yield by expression a deep green juice,purple juice, if they be gathered late in the autumn.

Medical properties and. uses. — The berries, or theirpressed juice, are briskly cathartic; but their operation is ac-companied with thirst and severe griping, which is not alto-gether mitigated by the most plentiful dilution. They wereformerly much used as a hydragogue purgative, but are nowvery seldom prescribed. The dose of the recent berries isBj; that of the expressed juice {%}, or 3j of the dried berries.Officinal preparation. Si/ncpus Rhamni- L. E.RHEUM. 1 Spec. Plant. Willd. ii. 488.Cl.9. Ord.3. EnneandriaTrigynia. Nat.ord. Holoraceae Z/k?j. Po-lygenic Juss.G. 803. Calyx 0. Corolla six-cleft, persistent. Seed one, three-sided.Sp. 2. R. undulatum. Wave-leaved Rhubarb. Amcen. Acad. iii.

212. /. 4.Sp. 3. R. palmatum. Palmated Rhubarb. Med. Bot. 2d ed. 662.t.23l. Phil. Trans, iv. 292. t. 12, 13.

1. Rheum undulatum.Officinal. Rheum undulatum ; radix. Dub. The root of Waved-leaved Rhubarb.

Syn. Rhubarb (F.) Rhabarber (G.) Rabarbaro (7.) Ruibarbo (S.) Rawend {Aral.)Rewind Chini(tf.)

This species of rheum was supposed by Boerhaave to be thetrue Chinese rhubarb ; and as it is not unlikely that foreignrhubarb is taken from several species, that which we receive byway of Canton, which certainly differs more than simply inthe drying from that which comes through Russia, may be theproduce of this plant; and the Dublin College is right in givingit a place in the list of materia medica. It is a native of Chinaand Siberia, but gi-ows well in this country. The root dividesinto a number of thick fibres, which run deep, and are ex-tremely yellow within: the leaves, which appear early in thespring, are supported on moderately thick footstalks, channelledon their under side, and plain on their upper: the leaves arelong, running to a point much waved on their edges, a little

1 The pigment called sap green is the inspissated juice of this berry.1 "Pr,m Dioscoridis. •