Volume 4

Medical botany : containing systematic and general descriptions, with plates of all the medicinal plants comprehended in the catalogues of the materia medica as published by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin ..., / by William Woodville.

  • Woodville, William, 1752-1805.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical botany : containing systematic and general descriptions, with plates of all the medicinal plants comprehended in the catalogues of the materia medica as published by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin ..., / by William Woodville. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    12/340 (page 634)
    female flowers stand in spikes, and are composed of a calyx divided into five ovate leafits, enclosing an equal number of small whitish petals, and within these the ncctaria are placed. The female flower produces a roundish germen, supporting three bifid spreading styles, terminated by obtuse stigmata : the capsule is globular, rough, marked with six furrows, and divided into three cells, containing a solitary oval shining seed. The history of the Cascarilla Clutia will determine what was left doubtful in that of the Croton Cascarilla, which is figured on the authority of Linnmus;1 though we then observed that it did not appear “ sufficiently ascertained” whether or no it furnished the officinal Cascarilla. This point however we can now con- fidently decide in the negative. Among other circumstances, which tended to involve the parental source of Cascarilla long in uncertainty, was the assertion of some authors/ that it was a native of the Spanish Main, and was thence imported into Europe; thus founding a presumption, that the Cascarilla and Elutheria Barks were different, and that the latter only was the produce of the Bahama Islands. But this assertion we have discovered to be contrary to fact, fur, upon inquiry, we do not find that this drug was ever exported from Spanish America, but that the Bahamas have constantly supplied the European markets with Cascarilla bark, a parcel of which was sent here from one of those Islands, along with specimens of the tree pro- ducing it; of which the figure here given is a faithful representa- tion, as may be seen by comparing it with the original in the herbarium of Sir Joseph Banks. But it will be necessary to observe here, that Dr. Wright, in his account of the medicinal plants growing in Jamaica/ gives the name Croton Elutheria to a tree, the bark of which he says “ is the a The bark of this plant, according to Dr. Wright, has none of the sensible qualities of Cascarilla. k Sec Boulduc. Hist. de VAc. des Sc. 1719. p. 14. Spiclmann M. M. p. 249. * Med. Journ. vol. 8. p. 3.