Spec. Plant. Willd. ii. 616. Cl. 10. Ord. 1. Decandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Ericaceae. G. 871. Cal. five-parted. Corolla ovate, the mouth pellucid at the base. Berry five-celled. Species 7. A. Uva Ursi. Trailing Arbutus, or Bearberry. Med.

Bot. 3d edit. 287.t.100. Smith's Flora Britan. i. 403. Sprengel

Syst. Veget. Officinal. Uva Ursi, Lond. Arbuti Uvae Ursi folia, Edin.

Dub. Uva Ursi, Leaves of Bearberry, or Trailing Arbutus.

Syn. Bousserole; Raisin d'ours (F.), Baerentraube; Sandberren (G), Beer-endruif (Dutch), Mulbar-riis (Dan.), Mjolonris (Swed.), Borowekowe (Pol.), Uva Orsina (I.), Madronna Uva de Orso; Guaynha (S.), Uva de Urso (Port.), Kleh (Chipewyan), Attoonagaweeat (Esquimaux).

1 Basil Valentine was a Benedictine monk at Erfurd in Germany. He was born in the year 1394, and was the first person who applied chymistry, which prior to his time was considered merely as the art of making gold, to the purposes of medicine. He was the discoverer of the virtues of antimonial preparations as medicines; and has celebrated them in his "Currus Triumphalis Antimonii," a work written in high Dutch, but of which there is an elegant Latin translation by Kirkringius. To Basil Valentine we are also indebted for the discovery of Ammonia and of Ether. He recommended a fixed alkali, made from the shoots of the vine, cut in the beginning of March, for the cure of the gout and gravel. He was the chief of the medical alchymists.

This shrub is a native of the north of Europe, and is found growing wild on the heathy mountains and in the glens of Scotland, flowering in June, It is a low shrub, with the branches nearly trailing; woody, and the bark smooth. The leaves are not unlike those of the myrtle, thick, evergreen, alternate, ovate, longish edges entire, on short petioles; with a network of veins on the under surface, which is pale green, whilst the upper is of a very deep green colour, and glossy. The flowers are in small clusters, each supported on a red pedicel. The calyx is small and obtusely five-toothed; the corolla tubular, oval, flesh-coloured, or whitish, with a red lip, divided at the margin into five minute, obtuse, reflex segments; containing ten short, downy filaments, crowned with erect reddish anthers; and an oval germen, bearing a style longer than the anthers, with a simple stigma. The fruit is a small, round, smooth, glossy, red capsule, with depressed umbilicus, five-celled, of an austere taste, and containing five angular seeds.

The plant should be procured in autumn; and "the green leaves alone selected and picked from the twigs, and dried by a moderate exposure to heat."1 The leaves are sometimes adulterated with those of Vaccinium Vitis Idaea, red whortleberry; which, however, are easily detected by wanting the reticulated surface of the Uva Ursi leaves, by their edges being revolute, sparsely and finely serrated, and dotted beneath; and by their infusion not yielding either tannin on the addition of a solution of isinglass, nor displaying the presence of gallic acid on the addition of sulphate of iron.

Qualities.-The fresh leaves are inodorous, and have a slightly bitter, astringent taste, leaving a sweet sensation in the mouth. When properly dried and powdered, they acquire an odour similar to that of Hyson tea; but the taste remains the same, the degree of bitterness only being increased. The colour of the powder is a light brown, with a shade of greenish yellow. Both water and alcohol extract its virtues, and the watery infusion strikes a deep black colour with sulphate of iron. When the powder of the leaves is rubbed with cold distilled water, little more than gallic acid is found in the solution. According, to the analysis of Melandri and Moretti, the leaves yield tannin, mucus, bitter extractive, gallic acid, some resin, lime, and oxygenizable extract2;

1 Cases of Pulmonary Consumption, §c. by Robert Bourne, M.D., 8vo. Lond. 1806.

2 Bulletin de Pharmacie, 1809, t. i. p. 59.

hence its infusion is incompatible with salts of iron, tartar emetic, nitrate of silver, salts of lead, infusion of yellow cinchona bark.

Medical properties and uses.- Uva Ursi possesses astringent properties1, on which account it was employed by the ancients in several diseases; but it was not till after the middle of the last century that the attention of modern practitioners was directed to it, as a remedy for calculous complaints and ulcerations of the urinary organs, by De Haen. His observations were confirmed by Cullen: who, however, referred the good effects it produced to its action on the stomach. Dr. Steh-berger found that it may be detected in the urine forty-five minutes after it is taken. It has been employed in monorrhagia, cvstirrhcea, diabetes, and other fluxes; and Dr. Bourne has lately recommended it in phthisis pulmonalis. He combines it with Cinchona and Opium; but in both these combinations the powers of the substances are greatly diminished by the tannates which are formed; and the cases which he published were scarcely sufficiently decisive to confirm its use in this complaint. The dose of the powdered leaves is from Эss. to 3ss., which may be taken two or three times a day.