Glycyrrhiza.

Licorice, the dried rhizome and root of glycyrrhiza, is mentioned by Oribasius (479a) and Marcellus (404) in the fourth century, and by Paulus Aegineta (494) in the seventh. It was known in the time of Dioscorides (194), and was commonly known in Europe during the Middle Ages. Its price in England, in the day of Henry III, was equal to that of grains of paradise. It was one of the articles paying duty to aid in the repairing of London Bridge in the day of Edward I, 1305. Saladinus (570), in the fifteenth century, mentioned it as an Italian medicine, and it was commonly known in the city of Frankfort in 1450. Mattioli (414), 1574, states that the juice, in the form of pastilles, was brought every year from Apulia. Indeed, the record of this substance is to the effect that it has been an article of domestic use, as a "sweet wood" for chewing, as a constituent of medicinal pastes, and in the form of a common water extract, since the earliest times. It is found in large quantities in the localities where it is cultivated, in Sicily, Italy, and Spain, while in moderately recent years we have seen immense amounts of licorice roots annually collected in the valleys of the Hermes and the Kayster, where probably it has grown wild from all times.

The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P., 1911, was written by John Uri Lloyd.