Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/265

Rh P D P E 255 production of about 20,000. A paper-mill close to Podolsk has an annual production of about .15.000. PODOPHYLLIN, a popular remedy which is much used by those who are averse to the employment of calomel and other mercurial preparations, and hence has been called vegetable mercury. The drug, as used in medicine, is obtained from the rhizome of the American mandrake or May apple, Podophyllum pdtatum, L., an herbaceous perennial belonging to the natural order Ber- leridaceee, indigenous in woods in Canada and the United States. The plant is about a foot high, bearing two pel tate, deeply-divided leaves, which are about 5 inches in diameter, and bear in the axil a solitary, stalked, white flower about the size and shape of the garden anemone, with six or more petals and twice as many hypogynous stamens. The fruit is ripe in May, and is an oval, yellow ish, fleshy berry containing twelve or more arillate seeds. The rhizome, as met with in commerce, occurs in cylin drical pieces two or three inches long and about inch in diameter, of a chocolate or purplish brown colour, smooth and slightly enlarged where the juncture of the leafy stem is indicated by a circular scar on the upper and a few broken rootlets on the under side. The odour is heavy and disagreeable, and the taste acrid and bitter. Podophyllin is a resinous powder obtained by precipitating an alcoholic tincture of the rhizome by means of water acidulated with hydrochloric acid. It varies in colour from greyish to bright yel low or greenish brown, the first-named being the purest. The drug has been the subject of numerous chemical investigations, the most recent of which (Podwyssotzki, in Ztschr. f. Russland, xx. 777) indicates that its activity is due to a definite resinous compound which has been named by its discoverer podopliyllotoxm ; another constituent named podophylloquercetin has neither emetic nor purgative properties, but appears to be the cause of the griping pains which sometimes accompany the action of podophyllin ; a third substance, jwdophyllic acid, has no medicinal action. Podophyl- lotoxin is a bitter amorphous principle soluble in weak alcohol and in hot water, ether, and chloroform, but insoluble in petroleum spirit. It is split up by the action of alkalies into a resin-acid named picropodophyllic acid, which is inert, and a very active substance, picropodophyllin, which crystallizes in delicate silky needles. Picropodophyllin is insoluble in water, and almost in soluble in spirit of less than 80 per cent., but is rendered soluble when united to the picropodophyllic acid. Podophylloquercetin crys tallizes in short needles of a yellow colour and metallic lustre. It is soluble in ether and alcohol, and forms a compound with acetate of lead which is soluble in acetic acid and can be sublimed in shining yellow crystals, and which on exposure to the air gradu ally becomes green. PodopTiyllic acid is insoluble in water and in ether, but soluble in alcohol. In medicine podophyllin is employed for torpor of the liver and obstinate constipation, arising from sedentary employment, imprudence in diet, and irregularity of habits. In small doses it acts as a slow and gentle laxative, especially if combined with henbane and belladonna, but in large doses it is an irritant hydragogue cathartic, the action of which persists for some time. The usual dose as a laxative and mild hepatic stimulant is about ^ of a grain, but the samples met with in commerce vary considerably in strength, and act with varying effect upon different individuals. Specimens having a greenish tint should be avoided, since they probably contain podophyllo quercetin and tend to cause severe griping. In large doses it appears to lose its stimulant action on the liver. Podophyllin is official in the pharmacopoeias of Great Britain, India, France, Russia, and the United States. POE, EDGAR ALLAN (1809-1849), is the most interest ing figure in American literature, and his life furnishes the most extraordinary instance on record of systematic misrepresentation on the part of a biographer. The greater part of his short working life was passed in intense and unremitting literary toil, and no poems or romances were ever produced at greater expense of brain and spirit than his. Yet, till lately, when Mr J. H. Ingram, the careful editor of Poe s works, undertook to collect the plain facts of the poet s life, the current statement and belief were that his strange tales and poems were flung off from a distempered imagination in the intervals of degraded debauchery. This myth was studiously floated by his first biographer, Griswold, and found readier acceptance with the public owing to the weird and horrible character of much of his imaginative work. Griswold s story of a life wayward and irregular from hapless beginning to disgrace ful close was just what people were prepared to believe about a genius so eccentric and with such a turn for dark mysteries, horrible crimes, inhuman doings and sufferings. That the author of such works should have been expelled from the university and from the army, and from situation after situation when he tried to make a living by litera ture, all owing to the gross irregularity of his habits, and should finally have died in a hospital in a fit of intoxi cation, seemed credible enough when affirmed by a self- constituted biographer. Many of Griswold s allegations were denied at the time, but the denials were local and isolated, and the truth had no chance against the system atic libel, repeated as it was in many editions, till Mr Ingram prepared a regular and authoritative memoir. 1 There was a sufficient mixture of truth with falsehood to make Griswold s story plausible. It was not quite correct to describe Poe as the son of strolling players, but his father, a man of good family, had married an actress and taken to the stage as a profession. Their son was born in Baltimore, February 19, 1809; and father and mother died in 1811 when he was a child. The orphan was adopted by his godfather, Mr Allan, a wealthy mer chant, and from his eighth till his thirteenth year (1816- 1821) was placed at school in England. Thence he was transferred to an academy at Richmond, Virginia, and thence at the age of seventeen to the university of Virginia at Charlottesville. Mr Allan was childless, and apparently treated his adopted son as his own child. Why Poe left the university after one session is not clearly explained, but it has be on ascertained that he was not expelled, but on the contrary was honourably distinguished as a student, although it is admitted that he had contracted debts and had &quot;an ungovernable passion for card-playing.&quot; These debts may have been sufficient cause for a quarrel with Mr Allan. Poe disappeared for two years, setting out for Europe to join the Greeks in their fight for independence. Reappearing at Richmond in 1829, he stayed at home for a year, and then was entered as a military cadet at West Point. But all his ambitions by this time were towards literature ; he neglected his duties, disobeyed orders, and was dismissed from the service of the United States. What he did for two years after is not ascertained, but in 1833 he reappeared as the successful competitor for a prize offered by a Baltimore newspaper for a prose story. From that time he subsisted by literature. Mr Allan had married again, and died soon afterwards, leaving an heir by his second wife, and &quot;not a mill,&quot; as Griswold puts it, to Poe. It is chiefly in his account of Poe s literary career that Griswold has been guilty of slandering the subject of his biography, representing him as rendered incapable of permanent employment by his intemperate habits. There would seem to be not the slightest foundation for this coarse slander. During the fifteen years of his literary life Poe was connected with various newspapers and magazines in Richmond, New York, and Philadelphia, and there is unanimous testimony that, so far from being an irregular contributor, he was a model of punctuality and thorough ness, and took a pride in these homely virtues. His connexion was not in any one case &quot; severed by his irregu larities.&quot; He wrote first for the Southern Literary Mes senger in Richmond, and edited it for some time ; then, in 1837, he removed to New York, and wrote criticisms and did editorial work for the Netv York Quarterly Revietv ; 1 See his Works of Edgar Allan Pee, 4 vols., 1374-75.