Spec. Plant. Willi, i. 1331.

1 Jahreshericht, 1835.

Dioscoridis. Said to have been named after Gentius, ting of Illyria, who first discovered its medicinal properties 167 years before the birth of our Saviour. Many other species of gentian as well as the G. lntea possess the same medicinal properties; namely, G. biloba, G. punctata, G. Macrophylla, and G. Catesbaci, The G. Chirayita is now much used as a stomachic bitter in this country.

Cl. 5. Ord. 2. Pentandria Digynia. Nat. ord. Gentianeae.

G. 512. Corolla one-petalled. Capsule two-valved, one-celled; with two longitudinal receptacles. * Corollas Jive or nine cleft, somewhat bell-shaped. Species 1. G. lutea. Yellow Gentian. Med. Bot. 3d. edit. 273. t. 95. Officinal. Gentianae radix, Lond. Gentianae luteae radix,

Edin. Dub. Gentian root.

Syn. Gentiane jaune (F.), Gelber Enzian ( G.), Gentiaan (Dutch), Entzian-rod (Dan.), Baggsota (Swed.), Genziana (I.), Jenciana (S.), Genciana Ama-rella (Port).

This species of gentian is a perennial plant, found growing on the Alps of Switzerland and Austria, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and in North America. The root is thick, long, and cylindrical. The lower leaves are petiolate, large, spear-shaped, stiff, and having five large veins on the back, plaited, and of a yellowish green colour; those of the stem are concave, smooth, and egg-shaped, sessile, and almost embracing the stem, which rises three or four feet in height. The flowers are in whorls at the upper joints, large, yellow, peduncled, and beautiful: the calyx, which is a membranous deciduous spathe, bursts on the side when the flower opens : the corolla is rotated, divided into five or eight narrow spreading segments, elliptical, and speckled with many thick dots. The filaments are shorter than the corolla, and furnished with long erect anthers : the germen is conical, crowned with two sessile reflected stigmas; and becomes a conical capsule, which contains numerous small seeds.

Gentian roots are brought to this country from Germany. They are in pieces of various lengths and thickness, twisted, wrinkled on the outside, and covered with a brownish or dull orange-coloured cuticle.

Qualities.-They have no particular odour, and the taste is intensely bitter without being nauseous. When cut transversely, the pieces exhibit a yellow maculated heart, with thick bark verging to brown. The sensible qualities of gentian root are extracted by ether, alcohol, and water. The two former extract a resin and a bitter extractive matter; and the latter, some part of these and a considerable quantity of mucilage also, which occasions the infusion often to become ropy. Diluted alcohol is its proper menstruum. In the bitter extractive the virtues of the drug seem to reside. According to the analysis of MM. Henry, senior, and Caventou, Gentian contains an odorous, very fleeting principle; a yellow bitter principle, which they named gentianin; a substance resembling birdlime; a greenish oily matter; a free organic acid; a saccharine principle; gum; a tawny colouring matter; and woody fible.1 The Gentianin is supposed to be the active principle of the plant: it is a yellow, inodorous, crystallizable substance, with the bitterness of the Gentian, scarcely soluble in cold water, but very soluble in alcohol and ether.2

Medical properties and uses.-Gentian-root is tonic, stomachic, and in large doses aperient. Its use as a stomachic bitter is of a very ancient date; and it is still, perhaps, the most generally employed of this class of medicines. It has been found beneficial in dyspepsia, gout, hysteria, and jaundice, chlorosis, dropsy, and diarrhoea; and in all cases of general debility in which tonics are indicated. It is sometimes joined with the cinchona in intermittents; and, according as the circumstances of the cases for which it is prescribed direct, it may be combined with orange-peel, chalybeates, aromatics, squill, mineral acids, and neutral salts. On account of its antiseptic effects on dead animal matter, its infusion has been used as an application to putrid ulcers. The forms in which it is generally given are infusion and tincture.

The dose in substance is from grs. x. to Эij.

Officinal preparations.-Extractum Gentiance, L.E.D. Infusum Gentianae compositum, L. E. D. Tinctura Gentianae composita, L. E. D. Vinum Gentianae compositum, E.3