The description, composition, and preparations of the Sanguinaria canadensis / by George D. Gibb.

  • Gibb, Sir George Duncan, 1821-1876.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The description, composition, and preparations of the Sanguinaria canadensis / by George D. Gibb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The form and dimensions of the dried root, as usually met with, are repre- sented in the woodcuts. There is but the one kind only of blood-root employed in commerce, and it is met with unadulterated, there being no inducement to practise fraud, from its cheapness and abundant growth. A few extraneous but unimportant matters are sometimes found with the dried roots. Two packages of the dried root sent me by my friend Dr. Fenwick, obtained from Lyman, Savage, and Co., drug- gists, of Montreal, contained eight pounds each, and were put up in oblong deal boxes, with a sliding lid, and were perfectly air-tight. The odour of the root is peculiar and somewhat narcotic, and on handling it, causes sneezing; the taste is bitterish, acrid, and durable. The sneezing effect is also produced by stirring the powder. It yields its virtues to water and alcohol, and these will be found to be the greatest when the seeds are ripe, about the months of May and June, which are the best time to collect the plant for medicinal purposes. The virtues of the root are said to be rapidly deterio- rated by time ; some difference of opinion, however, exists on this point. The powdered root possesses a brighter brownish orange-red colour than powdered cinnamon, and otherwise resembles it. The seeds are about the size of grains of barley, of a dark shiny reddish brown colour, half surrounded with a peculiar white vermiform appendage, which pro- jects at the lower end. Like most other seeds of the poppy tribe, the albumen of the seeds of this plant is between fleshy and oily. A bland and nutritious colourless fixed oil is obtained from the seeds, which, as already mentioned, ripen in the months of May and June, or even much earlier in the southern states of America. The juice of the plant, generally of an orange colour, sometimes assumes the tint and redness of blood, especially in the northern parts of Canada. That obtained from the leaves is of a lighter tint. Both stain a deep orange yellow, and hence its use as a dye, as described in the economical uses of the plant further on. The juice, when examined under the microscope, presents numerous trans- parent globules, like those represented in milk, and multitudes of coloured granules, free and in clusters ; this is at 300 diameters. With a higher power than this, the likeness to the globules of milk is even more distinct, as they are varied in size, and are equally as numerous as in rich milk. With a still higher power of 740 diameters, the fluid is seen to be in a state of life, as multitudes of