This section is from the book "The London Dispensatory", by Anthony Todd Thomson. Also available from Amazon: PDR: Physicians Desk Reference.
Spec. Plant Willd. i. 603. Cl. 1. 1. Ord. 1. Tetrandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Rubiaceae. G. 187. Corolla of one petal, bell-shaped. Berries two, oneseeded. Species 1. R. tinctorum.1 Dyers' Madder. Med. Bot. 3d. edit.
173. t. 67. Officinal. Rubiae tinctorum radix, Edin. Dub. The root of
Dyers' Madder.
Syn. Garance (F.), Krappwurzel, Faerberrothe (G.), Mee (Dutch), Krap (Dan. Swed.), Iiadiche di liobbia o Garanza (I.), Rudia (S.), Ruida (Port.), Munjith (H.), Manjttittie ( Tam.), Marzana (Pol), Mariona (Muss.), Kermesa Buja ( Turk.).
This plant is a perennial, with annual stems. It is a native of the south of Europe, the Levant, and Africa, and has been cultivated to a very great extent for upwards of 300 years in Zealand: it flowers in June.2 The root is composed of many long, thick, succulent fibres, about the thickness of a man's finger, united at the top in a head, from which go off many side-roots, extending under the surface of the ground, and throwing up shoots by which the plant may be propagated. The stems are quadrangular, jointed, procumbent, and furnished with rough, short, hooked points, by which they are supported on the neighbouring plants. The leaves, which are in whorls of four or five, are elliptical, pointed, rough, and ciliated, about three inches long, nearly one broad in the middle, and having the midribs armed with the same kind of spines as on the stems. The branches bearing the flowers spring from the joints of the stems. The flowers are small, terminal, with a campanulate, yellow corolla, cut into four oval segments; the filaments short, supporting simple erect anthers; and the germen is inferior and double, crowned with a slender style bearing two globular stigmas, and becoming two round black berries.
• As madder is an article of great national importance as a dye-stuff, many attempts have been made to cultivate it in this country, but without success, the Dutch madder being both better and cheaper than ours. That it can be grown to great perfection in this country is certain, and the effort to introduce its culture should not be dropped. The best comes from Zealand; to which Britain alone is said to have paid 200,000Z. annually for madder.-Bancroft on Permanent Colours, 2d edit. vol. ii. p. 222.
Madder root is dug up for use in the third summer of its growth. It is then dried gradually in a stove built in the form of a tower, containing several floors: and from the uppermost it is progressively removed to the lowest; after which it is threshed to remove the cuticle, and then dried completely in a kiln. When perfectly dried it is pounded, and finally packed in barrels for the market. There are three descriptions of this powder. The first pounding separates and reduces to a powder the fibrillas and the skins of the larger roots only, which is sold at a low price under the name of mull; a second pounding separates one third of the remaining parts of the large roots, and is sold under the name of gemcens; and a third pounding forms into a powder the pure bright residue of the roots, which is the best, and is simply called crop madder.1 In the Levant the root is termed Alizari.
Qualities.-Madder has an unpleasant but not strong odour; and a bitter, slightly austere taste. It attracts the moisture of a damp atmosphere, and is injured by it. To water, alcohol, and volatile oils, at a temperature of 60°, it imparts a red colour; but to water at 212° the colour imparted has a deep tinge of brown. Its principal constituent is extractive, which is precipitated, by a solution of alum, brownish red; by the alkaline carbonates and lime-water, blood-red or lake; and by acetate of lead, brown.2 The taste and odour of the madder are imparted to water, ether, and alcohol by infusion. The colouring principles of madder are various; one of them is peculiar. When the madder is digested in ether and evaporated, it has a brown hue, and when sublimed in a gentle heat, it condenses in small, red, acicular, diaphanous, flexible crystals, which are insipid and inodorous, and give to boiling water a rose-red colour. They are also soluble in 210 parts of alcohol, and 160 of ether, at 60° Fahr.: they neutralize alkaline leys, to which they impart a violet colour.
Robiquet and Colin have named this principle alizarine : it consists of 18 parts of carbon, 20 of hydrogen, and 62 of oxgen, in 100 parts.
Medical properties and uses.-Madder is usually regarded as emmenagogue, and was formerly much relied on in chlorosis, and scanty and difficult menstruation. It has also been recommended in jaundice, and the atrophy of infants: but its efficacy in any disease is extremely problematical. Its colouring matter, however, is carried into the circulation, tinges the urine and the milk a blood-red colour, and is deposited in the bones.1
1 Bancroft, 1. c.
2 Annates de Chimie, iv. 104.
. The dose of madder may be from grs. xv. to Э j., united with sulphate of potassa, and given three or four times a day.
 
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