Stillingia has been adopted both as the officinal and vernacular name of the root of the Stillingia sylvatica, or Queen's delight, an indigenous perennial herb, growing in the pine-woods of our South-eastern States, from Virginia to Florida. The root is woody, cylindrical, wrinkled, of a dirty yellowish-brown colour, a slight, peculiar, oleaginous odour, and a bitterish, pungent taste, followed by an unpleasant sense of acrimony in the mouth and fauces. it imparts its virtues to water and alcohol. So far as I know, it has not been accurately analyzed; but it is thought by Dr. H. R. Frost to owe its medical properties to a somewhat volatile principle; as both its odour and activity are impaired by time.

In its effects on the system, the root is in large doses an emeto-cathar-tic; but it is used chiefly if not exclusively for the alterative properties it is supposed to possess. From the concurrent testimony of those who have employed it remedially, there is reason to believe that it acts advantageously in secondary syphilis, scrofulous affections, cutaneous eruptions, chronic hepatic disease, and other complaints for which the alteratives are usually employed. The dose of the root, in powder, for alterative purposes, is said to be from fifteen to thirty grains; but the medicine is better given in decoction or tincture. The decoction, made by slowly boiling an ounce of the bruised root with twenty fluidounces of water to a pint, is given in the dose of one or two fluidounces, three or four times a day, increased till it shows signs of activity by somewhat irritating the stomach, when it should be diminished. There can be little doubt, if its activity is in any degree dependent on a volatile principle, that an infusion, made in the same proportions by percolation, would be more efficient. The tincture may be made with two ounces of the root to a pint of diluted alcohol, and given in the dose of a fluidrachm.