Eupatorium aromaticum. White Snakeroot.

Also see: Eupatorium aromaticum. White Snakeroot. - Eupatorium perfoliatum. Boneset. - Eupatorium purpureum. Queen of the Meadow. - Eupatorium teucrifolium. (E. Verbenaefolium.) Wild Horehound. - -

Nat. Ord. — Asteraceae. Sex. Syst.— Syngenesia Aequalis.

The Root.

Description. — This is a perennial plant, with a rough, slightly pubescent stem, about two feet in hight, and corymbose at the summit. The leaves are from two to four inches long, and about one half as wide, on petioles not quite an inch long, opposite, subcordate, lance-ovate, acute, three-veined, obtusely serrate, smoothish, or very slightly pubescent. Involucre simple, pubescent ; scales of the involucre nearly equal and in one row. Flowers white, aromatic, in small corymbs ; heads large, ten to fifteen-flowered.

History. — This is an indigenous plant, growing from Massachusetts to Louisiana, but especially throughout the middle states, and flowering in August and September. The root is the officinal part, and should be collected in September and October. It has a pleasant, aromatic odor, and a bitterish taste. Its virtues are extracted by boiling water.

Properties and Uses. — Diaphoretic, antispasmodic, expectorant and aromatic. Used in the form of infusion or decoction in fevers of a typhoid character, connected with wakefulness ; also, in pleurisy and peripneumony, as a diaphoretic and expectorant. In hysteria, hypochondria, nervous irritability and flatulence, it is very beneficial. Dose of the infusion or decoction from half a fluidounce to four fluidounces. It is sometimes connected with sanguinaria and asclepias, in pulmonary diseases. Said to be valuable in gravel.

Off. Prep. — Infusum Eupatoriae Aromaticae.

The American Eclectic Dispensatory, 1854, was written by John King, M. D.