Spec. Plant. Willd. i. 977. Cl. 5. Ord. 1. Pentandria Monogyma. Nat. Ord. Cinchonaceae. G. 357. Flowers in an involucred head. Corolla tubular. Stigma two-parted. Berry two-seeded. Receptacle chaffy. Species nova. Cephaelis Ipecacuanha.2 Ipecacuan, Linn. Soc.

Trans, vi. p. 137. t. 2. De Candolle, Prodromus. Martins Sp. Mat. Med. Brazil.

1 Gaertner de Fruct. ii. 385. t. 162.

2 As Willdenow, following Swartz, has united the genus Callicocca with that of Cephaelis, we have referred the Ipecacuanha to this genus.

Officinal. Ipecacuanhae radix, Lond. Edin. Dub. The root of Ipecacuan. Woodvilles Med. But. 3d edit. vol. v. t. 11.

Syn. Ipecacuanne (F.), Brechwerzel (G.), Krakrot (Swed.), Ipecacuana (I.), Ipecacuanha o Bejuquillo (5.), Cipo (Port.).

This plant is a perennial, found growing in shadowy moist situations, in the forests of the provinces of Pernambuqua, Bahia, Rio Janeiro, Paulensia, Mariannia, and other provinces of the Brazils; flowering in December, January, February, and March; and ripening its berries in May. The root is simple, or somewhat branched, and furnished here and there with short radicles: it is roundish, three or four inches in length, and two or three lines in thickness; bent in different directions, externally brown, and annulated with prominent, unequal, roughish rings. The stem is procumbent at the base, rising from five to nine inches in height, round, the thickness of a hen's quill; smooth, brown, leafless, and knotted in the lower part, but leafy towards the apex: after the first year, it throws out runners, from which, about six inches apart, new erect stems arise. The inferior leaves are caducous, so that not more than eight generally remain at the summit of each stem when it flowers; they are almost sessile, opposite, spreading, ovate, pointed at both ends, three or four inches long, and less than two broad; of a deep green colour on the upper surface, and of a whitish green, downy, and veined on the under.

At the base of each pair of leaves are sessile, fimbriated, short, withering stipules, embracing the stem. The flowers are aggregated in a solitary head, on a round, downy footstalk, terminating the stem, and encompassed by a four-leaved involucre. The florets are sessile, from 15 to 24 in number, interspersed with little bractes: the calyx is very small, five-toothed, superior, and persistent; the corolla mo-nopetalous, the expansion shorter than the tube, and divided into five ovate, acute, recurved segments: the filaments are short, capillary, inserted in the upper part of the tube, and bearing long erect anthers: the germen inferior, supporting a filiform style, with two obtuse stigmas the length of the anthers; becoming a soft one-celled berry, of a reddish purple colour changing to black, and containing two oval seeds.

According to De Candolle, the term Ipecacuanha in South America implies generally vomiting root; and, therefore, he says, it is applied to the roots of very different species of plants: but the Indians give the name Poaya to all emetic roots. But the name is derived from Epi, root; and Cacuanha, the name of the place where it is most abundantly found. The plant, however, which we have described from Professor Brotero's description published in the sixth volume of the Linnean Transactions, and the Psycotria emetica, which

Mutis says yields the Peruvian gray ipecacuan, are the plants that yield the varieties of the root brought to this country.1 We have found very little of the white ipecacuan, which is the root of the Richardia emetica, in any of the specimens of the ipecacuan of the shops which we have examined. Both the gray and the brown varieties of the root are brought to this country packed in bales from Rio Janeiro. Both are, in short, wrinkled, variously bent, and contorted pieces, which break with a resinous fracture. The gray is about the thickness of a small quill, full of knots and deep circular fissures, that nearly reach down to a white, woody, vascular cord that runs through the heart of each piece; the external part is compact, brittle, and looks smooth; the brown is smaller, more wrinkled, of a blackish brown colour on the outside, and whitish within: the white is woody, and has no wrinkles.

In choosing ipecacuanha, the larger roots, which are com-pact, and break with a resinous fracture, having a whitish gray, somewhat semitransparent appearance in the inside of the cortical part, with a pale straw-coloured medullary fibre, are to be preferred.

It is impossible to ascertain at what period the effects of this root were first known in America, where the Indians used it as an emetic before their connection with Europeans; but although Piso described its uses fully in his Natural History of Brazil so early as 1618, and brought the root to Europe, yet it was scarcely used by Europeans before the year 1700. It was carried to France by a French physician of the name of Le Gras, in 1672; but it did not attract general attention until it was, a third time, introduced by a French merchant of the name of Grenier, who brought 150 lbs. of it from Spain in 1686, with which trials were made at the Hotel Dieu. John Helvetius, grandfather of the celebrated Helve-tius, first made known its use in dysentery, and was rewarded by Louis XIV. with 1000l. sterling and public honours for the discovery, and for making it public.

Qualities.-The entire root is inodorous, but the powder has a faint disagreeable odour. The taste is bitter, sub-acrid, and extremely nauseous. Water at 212° takes up rather more than eight parts in twenty of ipecacuan, but decoction destroys the emetic power of the root; alcohol takes up four parts, and proof spirit six and a half; and the alcoholic is more emetic than the aqueous solution. Various analyses of ipecacuanha have been made in order to detect its emetic principle; but the most satisfactory is that of MM. Majendie and Pelletier, an account of which was first published in 1817.1 After digesting the powdered root in double its weight of ether, in order to separate any fatty matter, the remainder was treated with four times its weight of highly rectified alcohol, until it ceased to become coloured even when aided by heat. These tinctures, after being allowed to cool, and to deposit some flakes of wax which were separated by filtration, were then evaporated to dryness, and the residue re-dissolved in cold distilled water. Magnesia is next added to the watery infusion, which separates any acid it may contain : the mixture is then filtered and evaporated; and the emetia being insoluble is precipitated with the magnesia.