2 Spec. Plant. Willd. ii. 1235. Cl. 13. Ord.3. Polyandria Trigynia. Nat. ord. Ranunculaceae. G. 1062. Cal. none. Petals five, the highest arched. Nectaries two, peduncled, recurved. Pods, three to five. * * With blue corollas.

I witnessed a case in which a fluid ounce of the strong acid was swallowed, with the intention of committing suicide, by a farrier; and, although it remained an hour in the stomach before it was ejected by vomiting, yet the person recovered. T.

2 Labor. Chym. 1808.

** Quo quia nascuntur dura vivacia caute Agrestes Aconita vocant."

Ovid. But Thcophrastus derives the name from Acone, a city of Bithynia, near which it grew in great abundance.

Sp. 8. A. Napellus (Edin.) Med. Bot. 3d ed. 461.i.165.

Sp. 9. A. panicidatum (Lond. Dub.) De Candolle Regni veg. Syst.

Nat. 375.1 Officinal. Aconiti Folia, Lond. Aconiti Napelli Folia,

Edin. Aconitum; Folia, Dub. The leaves of Monkshood.

Syn. Aconit, Chaperon de Moine ( F.), Blauer-strumhut (G.), Monnikskappen (Belg.), Stermhut (Dan), Stermhatt (Swed.), Napello (I.), Aconito (S).

The species of aconite now introduced into the London and Dublin pharmacopoeias is regarded as the plant originally used by Stoerk. It is a perennial plant flowering in July; and found native in the alpine forests of Carinthia, Carniola, and the mountainous parts of Germany.

The roots are napiform and fibrous; the stem is firm, elongated, erect, smooth, rising to the height of five or six feet, leafy, and terminating in a long sparse panicle of flowers, racemose, and the peduncles branched below. The lower leaves are few, alternate on long channelled petioles; palmated or rather pedate, being divided to the base into three or five broad cuneiform divisions, deeply cleft and toothed; the petioles are shorter, and the leaves less divided, the nearer they are to the summit of the stem : the colour of the whole is a deep green on the upper disk, and a pale green on the under; both sides are naked, smooth, and shining. The flowers are of a caerulean blue, on unifloral, erect, axillary, pubescent pedicels, with subulate bracteoles. The calyx consists of five petaloid sepals; two lateral and orbiculate, two inferior and oblong, and the uppermost helmet-shaped, and more acuminate than in Napellus, covering two singular, peduncled petals; cuculated, the spur of each being hooked and blunt; the lip lanceolate, revolute, and bifid. The filaments are spread, and white at the base, where they closely cover the germens; but the upper part is filiform, purple, spreading, and bearing whitish anthers.

The germens are three, four, or five, with simple reflected stigmas; and become capsules, containing many angular seeds.

For medicinal use, the leaves should be gathered when the flowers appear.

Qualities.-Aconite roots and leaves have a faint narcotic odour; and a moderately bitter, acrid taste, leaving a painful sensation of heat in the mouth, when they are much chewed. The whole of the plant is poisonous; but the deleterious qualities of the leaves are lost in a considerable degree when they are dried, or long kept, and much of the acrimony is dissipated. Its narcotic principle was discovered by M. Brandes l γ. Storchianum, Caule flexuoso, panicula laxa debili, rostro brevi. In Alpibus Helveticis. A. Napellus officinalis. Storck, Libell. de Stram, p. 69. icon.

to be an alkali, which he has named Aconitine. (See Aconi-tina Part III.)

Medical uses and properties.-Aconitina is narcotic, diaphoretic, and in some cases diuretic.1 In over doses it occasions violent nausea, vomiting, hypercatharsis, vertigo, cold sweats, mania, and convulsions which terminate in death; and these effects appear to depend on its action on the nervous system, for although it operates topically, yet dissections of fatal cases have not displayed any particular marks of inflammatory action.

Stoerk first administered Aconite internally in chronic rheumatism, gout, exostosis, paralysis, and scirrhus; and since the publication of his experiments, in 1702, it has been advantageously employed in similar cases, and also in amaurosis, scrophula, cancer, itch, venereal nodes, and intermit-tents. Much caution is required in the exhibition of it; and it is absolutely necessary to know the length of time it has been gathered, as its activity varies so very considerably, as to require this to be ascertained before the dose can be apportioned. Besides the Aconitina, the plant is given in the form of powder, extract, and tincture2; and may be combined with calomel, antimonials, camphor, and guaiacum. The dose of the powder is one or two grains, gradually increasing it to six or eight.

Officinal preparations. - Aconitina, L. Extractum Aconiti, L. E. D.