An inaugural treatise on veratrine : offered to the dean and faculty of the Medical College of the State of South-Carolina / by Charles Rabe.

  • Rabe, Charles.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural treatise on veratrine : offered to the dean and faculty of the Medical College of the State of South-Carolina / by Charles Rabe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    TREATISE ON VERATBINE. The advantages which medical science has derived from ana- lytical chemistry, have, during the last twenty years, been great and signal. The irritable stomach of a febrile patient is no longer loaded with a mass of woody fibre, once constituting the great specific in his disease; but a minute quantity of an alkali, re- sembling the substance it is extracted from in nothing but its effects, supplies its place—quinine, one of the greatest and most important discoveries of the microcosmic science. The contemporary discoveries of morphine, iodine and other chemicals, showed the medical profession what they had to hope from the researches of the chemist; and diseases, hitherto almost the opprobria of medicine, vanished before the unencumbered strength of a comparatively unknown vegetable. One of these productions of nature and art combined, has of late years en- grossed the attention of physicians, and the testimonials of its efficacy have been abundant in both hemispheres. I speak of Veratrine, the object of the following essay; the pharmaceutical and medical properties of which I have endeavored to describe, both from personal experience and inquiry, and from the numer- ous references by the medical public here and in Europe. The several vegetables that yield this proximate principle, had already acquired a high celebrity in the materia medica of the ancients; for the names of Colchicum Autumnale, Veratrum Album and Sabadilla, are known to correspond to medicaments used by the Greek and Roman physicians. I will briefly animadvert upon their natural and medical history. 1. Veratrum Album, White Hellebore, a plant of the family Colchicacese, grows in the mountains of Switzerland, where it bears the popular name of Sneezeroot, [Niesewurz.] The root, the part used in medicine, is perennial, of a conical form, and ap- pears, when dried, of a particular wrinkled appearance, making recognition very easy. The dried root comes to us in pieces, from one to three inches in length, in the form of a truncated cone or cy- linder, of a black color internally, and exhibiting, when cut, a pale yellow surface, slightly interspersed with grey cylindrical fibres. The taste is described to be at first sweetish, then bitter, acrid and burning—qualities which seem to be lost in the dried state, as the specimens in my possession only communicated the sweetish taste. The powder or tincture of the root is a violent emetic and cathartic, 3?£3*2-