eneral knowledge, and for which reason I have
taken Lewis's Materia Medica for my text, unless where improvements have
been made in certain subjects I have consulted more modern authorities.
It should be observed, that writers on medical plants, with few
exceptions, have copied from one another: or with a little alteration as
to words only.

And as some vegetables, from their affinitiy, may be confounded with
others, whereby those possessing medical qualities may be substituted
for others having none, or even poisonous ones, I shall in some
instances enumerate a list of similar plants, which, with attention to
their botanical characters, it is hoped will prevent those dangerous
errors we have lately witnessed. As it is our business, in demonstrating
plants, to guard the student against such confusion, it will be proper
that specimens of such as come under this head be preserved, as a work
for reference and contrast wherever doubts may arise.

158. ACONITUM Napellus. COMMON BLUE MONKSHOOD. The Leaves. L. E.--Every
part of the fresh plant is strongly poisonous, but the root is
unquestionably the most powerful, and when chewed at first imparts a
slight sensation of acrimony, and a pungent heat of the lips, gums,
palate and fauces, which is succeeded by a general tremor and sensation
of chilliness.

This plant has been generally prepared as an extract or inspissated
juice, after the manner directed in the Edinburgh and many of the
foreign Pharmacopoeias, and, like all virulent medicines, it should be
first administered in small doses. Stoerck recommends two grains of the
extract to be rubbed into a powder with two drums of sugar, and as a
dose to begin with ten grains of this powder two or three times a-day.

Similar Plants.--Aconitum japonicum; A. pyrenaicum; Delphinium elatum;
D. exallatum.

Instead of the extract, a tincture has been made of the dried leaves
macerated in six times their weight of spirit of wine, and forty drops
given for a dose.--Woodville's Med. Bot. 965.

The Dublin College has ordered the Aconitum Neomontanum, which is not
common in this country [Footnote: In plants of so very poisonous a
nature as the Aconite, it is the duty of every one who describes them to
be particular. Here seems to have been a confusion. The A. Neomontanum
is figured in Jacquin's Fl. Austriaca, fasc. 4. p. 381; and the first
edition of Hortus Kewensis under A. Napellus erroneously quotes that
figure: but both Gmelin