This section is from the book "Recent Materia Medica: Notes On Their Origin And Therapeutics", by F. Harwood Lescher. Also available from Amazon: Recent materia medica.
Amorphous white powder, containing 20 to 21 per cent, of the alkaloid. Has been recommended as tasteless, but is nearly valueless from its insolubility in the stomach. Doses, 10 to 20 grains.
An amorphous yellow powder, soluble in three parts of cold water. Antiseptic, and believed to be efficacious in fevers, agues, etc.
A liquid hydrocarbon, from destructive distillation of resin. A fatty liquid; it dissolves Bals. Peru, 01. Cadinae, etc. Employed in capsules for blenorrhaea.
Black Alder or Buckthorn. Indigenous. N. O. Rhamnacecæ.
Bark, collected at least one year before being used, and the young in preference to the old bark. Thin, curled-up quills, with reddish interior. Tonic laxative, without griping. Dose of fluid extract,
1 drachm to 1/2 ounce.
(See Cascara Sagradi.)
Sumach. N. America.
Berries, bark, and fruit. Astringent antiseptic tonic. In dysentery, gonorrhoea, and scrofula; dose of fluid extract, 1 to 2 fluid drachms. An infusion of the inner root bark is valuable in the sore mouth attending salivation.
Poison Oak or Poison Ivy. N. America.
Fresh leaves; they abound with a most acrid juice.
Therapeutics. The tincture (1 in 8 dried leaves) has been used in America for paralysis, and the fluid extract in nocturnal incontinence. In muscular rheumatism, most useful: m. 1/8 to 1/4 of concentrated tincture (1 of fresh leaves to 2 of rect. spirit). Dose of fluid extract, 10 to 60 minims.
Japan, etc.
Its poisonous sap produces the varnish on the renowned lacquer-work of Japan. [The fruit of Rhus succedanea and other species gives Japan wax; Rhus semialata bears the curious shaped Chinese galls, the wood and powdered leaves of Rhus continus and Rhus coriaria, in Europe, give Sumac for dyers.]
 
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