Sarsaparilla

“ Sarsaparilla is grown to a small extent in Jamaica, and is occasionally exported thence to the London market in small quantities, but its orange colour and starchy bark are so different in appearance from the thin reddish-brown bark of the genuine drug, that it does not meet with a ready sale. ”

“ Every one is acquainted with the nature and character of this valuable medicinal root, the appearance of which must also be known to almost everybody,—since it is so very common for our druggists to display the bundles of it in their shop windows. Perhaps every one is not acquainted with the fact, that the sarsaparilla root is the product of a great many different species of plants most of them of the genus Simlax, but not a few belonging to plants of other genera, as those of Carex and Herreria the roots of which are also sold as sarsaparilla. ”

“ A Perfect Spring Medicine is Corbett’s Sarsaparilla.
As a remedy for the spring, the Shaker’s Sarsaparilla is of great value, cleansing the blood, regulating the stomach and bowels, and carrying away from the system many causes of disease. It is valuable as a household medicine, being adapted to children and youth and the most delicate females; and partaken at regular intervals, it preserves the health and insures a robust constitution. Mothers are its warmest friends, and females afflicted with wasting and ulcerative forms of disease, find it a truly great medicine. ”

“ Their constituents are known and their action is known. The public pays for sarsaparilla, for instance, and simply gets a 20 per cent. solution of flavoured alcohol, and there is no one to inform it that sarsaparilla has been exhaustively studied by pharmacologists, employing every means of observation and experiment in their power, and that none of them have yet been able to detect its capacity to modify the body or any function of the body in any degree at all whether in health or disease. ”

“ This Sarsaparilla is the great purifier of the blood and general juices of the system, it effects the most salutary changes in disease; cures scrofula, salt rheum, all scorbutic disorders, chronic sore eyes, rheumatism, piles, liver complaints, erysipelas, all blotches and eruptions of the skin; in short, it removes every impurity of the blood, and all humours and morbid collections of the body. ”

“ On the Mountains grow great quantities of Sarsaparilla, Mechoacan, and the China-Root, which being yellowish hath several Saffron-colour’d Knobs on the top. The Sarsaparilla grows with many Stalks, creeping along over the Ground; the Body thereof is tough and full of Prickles, the Leaves broad and sharp at the ends, and are of a bluish colour on one side, and green on the other, and bear Clusters of Flowers, which close like Buds, and are first green, next vermilion-red, and lastly blackish: within are two hard Stones, which inclose a white Kernel, by the Indians call’d Juapecanga. ”

“ The concentrated compound solution of sarsaparilla in the British Pharmacopœia contains about 21 parts of solids in 100 fluid parts, so that it may be concluded that the amounts of extracts of “Sarsaparilla, Dandelion, Mandrake, Dock, Pipsissewa, Juniper Berries, and other valuable vegetable remedies” in this mixture were not large. The liquid had a somewhat aromatic odour and taste, in which oil of juniper could not be detected, nor was it recognizable on distillation; none of the other ingredients mentioned is capable of being identified in such a mixture. ”

“ The composition of parillin and parigenin is not settled; the former belongs to the class of saponin. Yet parillin differs from saponin as contained in Saponaria or Quillaja [2650] by not being sternutatory; its solutions froth when shaken.
The presence in sarsaparilla of starch, resin, and calcium oxalate, as revealed by the microscope, has been already pointed out. Pereira [2651] examined the essential oil, which is heavier than water and has the odour and taste of the drug; 140 lb. of Jamaica sarsaparilla afforded of it only a few drops. ”

“ Other Common Names — False sarsaparilla, Virginia sarsaparilla, American sarsaparilla, small spikenard, rabbit's-root, shotbush, wild licorice.
Habitat and Range — Wild Sarsaparilla grows in rich, moist woods from Newfoundland west to Manitoba and south to North Carolina and Missouri.
Description of Plant — This native herbaceous perennial, belonging to the ginseng family (Araliaceae) , produces a single, long-stalked leaf and flowering stalk from a very short stem, both surrounded or sheathed at the base by thin, dry scales. ”

“ Most of the sarsaparilla exported from Belize comes from Guatemala and Honduras; but from Livingston more than 60,000 pounds were exported in 1884, of an appraised value of ten cents per pound. The plant is easily propagated by cuttings or seeds, and of course needs no cultivation or clearing; the yield will average twenty pounds of dried root from each plant. ”

“ The collection of sarsaparilla root is a very tedious business; a single root takes an Indian half a day or sometimes even a day and a half to unearth. The roots extend horizontally in the ground on all sides for about 9 ft., and from these the earth has to be carefully scraped away and other roots cut through where such come across them. A plant four years old will yield 16 ℔ of fresh root, and a well-grown one from 32 to 64 ℔, but more than half the weight is lost in drying. ”

“ Much of the sarsaparilla which is sold, has little or none of the real Spanish sarsaparilla in it; and as the Canchalagua of California is now rising into notice, there will, undoubtedly, be much sold as the genuine article, which will be composed of substances that Californians never saw.
The fact that the quack’s advertisement is not only ridiculously pompous and grandiloquent, but palpably false, [Pg 86] does not seem to injure the sale of his medicine, even with quite sensible people. ”

“ Sarsaparilla, China wood, and guaiacum wood, of each 11⁄2 oz.; crude antimony (tied in a rag) , 2 oz.; water, 6 pints; macerate for 12 hours (7 in hot weather) , boil to one half, add sassafras chips and senna, of each 1⁄2 oz., infuse 1 hour longer, and strain; when cold, decant the clear. Recommended in scrofula, secondary syphilis, and various cutaneous affections.
Zittmann’s Decoction of Sarsaparilla. Syn. Decoctum Zittmanni, L.; Ptisane de Zittmann, Fr. Prep. 1. (Stronger decoction; D. Z. Forte, Ph. Bor. 1847.) Sarsaparilla, 12 oz.; water, 72 lbs. (say 53⁄4 galls.) ”

“ It must not be supposed that all species of Smilax are capable of furnishing the drug. There are many, even South American, which like the S. aspera of Europe, have thin, wiry roots, which would never pass for medicinal sarsaparilla. ”

“ It would be idle to give a list of the different species of simlax that furnish the sarsaparilla root of the pharmacopeia. There is an almost endless number of them, and they are equally varied in respect to excellence of quality; some kinds are in reality almost worthless, and for this reason, in using it as a medicine, great care should be taken in the selection of the species. ”

“ Sarsaparilla, which for more than a hundred years later was a highly esteemed drug, had been detected by Pitt to be inert, and he condemned the use of bezoar, of powder of vipers, of mummy, and of many other once famous therapeutic agents, on the ground that accurate tests proved them of no effect. ”

“ It may make him mighty sick, but he won't die this trip."
"What is that stuff?" asked Nort.
"Sarsaparilla!" was the chuckling answer. "Nothing but good, old-fashioned sarsaparilla soda pop with the pop left out. It's as flat as ditch water. Where'd you get it?"
"Bought it from an old geezer who said it was Elixer of Life," Snake informed the doctor.
"You mean old Tosh?"
"Don't know what his name is," Bud said, "but he's an old man and he has a place back here in a cave. We caught him, a little while ago, brewing the stuff. ”

“ As observed, the sarsaparilla of the Mundrucu country is of the very best quality. It is the Simlax papyracea of Soiret, and is known in commerce as the “Lisbon,” or “Brazilian.” It is a climbing plant, or under-shrub, the stem of which is flattened and angular, with rows of prickles standing along the prominent edges. Its leaves are of an oval acuminated shape, and marked with longitudinal nerves. It shoots without any support, to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, after which it embraces the surrounding branches of trees and spreads to a great distance in every direction. ”

“ Our Shakers’ Sarsaparilla is not a secret or a quack remedy, nor are its ingredients withheld from those who desire to know them. Our claim to superiority is based on the growth, curing and selection of its several roots and berries, and the care with which they are compounded. ”

“ The rhizome is entirely absent, but the fibre or beard is preserved, and is reckoned a valuable portion of the drug. The roots are deeply furrowed, shrunken, and generally more slender than in the Honduras kind; the bark when shaved off with a penknife is seen to be brown, hard and non-mealy throughout. Yet it is by no means uncommon to find roots which have a smooth bark rich in starch. In colour, Jamaica sarsaparilla varies from a pale earthy brown to a deeper more ferruginous hue, the latter tint being the most esteemed. ”

“ The single large leaf, of exquisite bronzy tints when young, is compounded of from three to five oval, toothed leaflets on each of its three divisions.
While the true sarsaparilla of medicine should come from a quite different herb that flourishes in Mexico and South America, this one furnishes a commercial substitute enormously used as a blood purifier and cooling summer drink. Burrowing rabbits delight to nibble the long, slender, fragrant roots.
PARSLEY FAMILY (Umbelliferae)
Wild or Field Parsnip ”

“ If the blood be waterish as it is in hydropical bodies, and flows forth by reason of thinness, to draw off the water it will be profitable to purge with agaric, coloquintida: sweating is proper, for thereby the matter offending is taken away, and the blood carried to the other parts. To procure sweat, use cardus water, with mithridate, or the decoction of guaiacum, and sarsaparilla. The pills of sarsaparilla are commended. ”

“ The powdered red precipitate of mercury may be occasionally sprinkled on the parts surrounding the dead portion, in order that the granulations embracing it may be destroyed, and the part more completely detached. The general health must be all along carefully attended to. Sarsaparilla with guaiac, sassafras, mezereon, &c., is often useful, more especially if pains in other parts continue to annoy the patient. Under such medicines he in general improves very rapidly in appetite, flesh, and strength. ”

“ The cortex is red, and much thinner than in the mealy sorts.” “If a drop of oil of vitriol be applied to a transverse section of the root of the non-mealy sarsaparillas, both cortex and wood acquire a dark-red or purplish tint;” whilst in the preceding varieties, the mealy coat, and, sometimes, the pith, is but little altered in colour. “The decoction of non-mealy sarsaparilla, when cold, is somewhat darkened, but does not yield a blue colour when a solution of iodine is added to it.” ”

“ Few drugs have been more popular in the last half century, and it is even yet popularly supposed to be a wonderful tonic, a cure for many diseases. During the first half of the nineteenth century, when the humoral theory of the causation of diseases was generally accepted, certain German physicians thought they observed that a decoction of sarsaparilla was a sovereign remedy for various ailments having their origin in the blood. ”

“ Thus, by his great goodness and mercy, many have become Christians, and more are converted every day.
An herb grows in abundance on this island, and in the province of Guayaquil, which is called sarsaparilla because it grows like a bramble from its birth, and small leaves grow out of the suckers and other parts of the branches. [312] The roots of the herb are useful for all sicknesses, and especially for bubos, and to mitigate the evil which this pestiferous disease causes to man. Those who wish to be cured are put in a warm room, well covered up, so that the cold or air can do no injury. ”

“ Uses—Sassafras is reputed to be sudorific and stimulant, but in British practice it is only given in combination with sarsaparilla and guaiacum. Shavings of the wood are sold to make Sassafras Tea.
In America the essential oil is used to give a pleasant flavour to effervescing drinks, tobacco and toilet soaps. [2002]
Substitutes—The odour of sassafras is common to several plants of the order Lauraceæ. Thus the bark of Mesphilodaphne Sassafras Meissn., a tree of Brazil, resembles in odour true sassafras. ”

“ It must have been in such a forest that the story of Jack and the Beanstalk originated, for these vines bring it vividly to mind. One 85parasitic vine—the matapolo—starts as a slender vine, but gradually expands until it looks like a huge serpent; and if several cling to the tree they will kill it, but by that time they will support the dead trunk. The sarsaparilla, that health-giving plant, is one of these dependent vines, indigenous to these forests, and is a very common growth here. ”

“ Sarothamnus vulgaris Wimmer, 170 Sarsa, 703 Sarsaparilla, 703 ” Brazilian, 709 ” Guatemala, 709 ” Guayaquil, 710 ” Honduras, 709 ” Indian, 423 ” Jamaica, 709 ” Lisbon, 709 ” Mexican, 710 ” Pará, 709 Sarza, 703 Sassafras Bark, 539. 540 ” camphor, 538 ” nuts, 540 ” officinalis Nees, 537 ” oil, 229. 538 ” Root, 539 Sassafrasholz, 537 Sassafrid, 539 Sassafrin, 539 Sassarubin, 539 Satyrii radix, 654 Saussurea, 382 Savin, 626 Scammonium, 438 Scammony, 438 ” resin, 438 ” root, 442 Schierlingsblätter, 301 Schierlingsfrucht, 299 Schiffspech, 623 Schlangenwurzel, 591 Schœnanthus, 726. ”