Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/442

 422 WAKEFIELD WAKLEY of the New Testament, with Notes" (2 vols., 1791; 2d ed:, 2 vols., 1795); "An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public of Social Worship " (1791) ; " Memoirs " of his life (1792), continued by Rutt and Waine- wright (1804); and several pamphlets. He also edited numerous translations and editions of Greek and Latin classics. His " Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Llandaff's Ad- dress to the People of Great Britain " (1798) occasioned a prosecution first of his publisher and then of himself, and caused his imprison- ment for two years in Dorchester jail. His friends and partisans raised a subscription for him of about 5,000. WAKEFIELD, Prlsdlla (TBEWMAN), an English authoress, born at Tottenham, near London, about 1751, died in Ipswich in 1832. She pub- lished numerous works, chiefly educational and juvenile, including " Mental Improvement " (2 vols., 1794); "Leisure Hours" (2 vols., 1794); " Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, with Hints for its Improve- ment " (1798) ; " Domestic Recreation " (1805) ; "Sketches of Human Manners" (1807) ; "In- stinct Displayed " (1811) ; and several volumes of descriptive geography. In 1798 she estab- lished at Tottenham a bank for the savings of women and children, which in 1804 was or- ganized as a general savings bank, the first in Great Britain. W KK-ROIH, one of the common names, especially in the southern states, for ariscema triphyllum, which is also called jack-in-the- pulpit and Indian turnip ; and the name is also applied to species of trillium. (See TBILLIUM.) Ariscema belongs to the family aracect ; this includes endogenous plants with an acrid juice ; the flowers in a fleshy head or spadix, which is usually surrounded or subtended by a large, showily colored or peculiarly shaped bract or spathe ; the calla lily, or lily of. the Nile (/.'/- chardia), a popular house plant, is a representa- tive of this family. The arisrcmas have a tuber- ous rootstock, or corm, from which rises a simple scape, which is sheathed by the stalks of one or two compound, veiny leaves, and bears a largo greenish or purplish spathe, en- closing the spadix, at the base of which are clustered usually two kinds of naked flowers, which are sometimes in separate plants; the sterile flowers consist each of a cluster of an- thers, and the pistillate, placed below the staminate, are reduced to a one-celled ovary, with a depressed stigma, which ripens into a one- or few-seeded red berry. There are three species in the United States; the one called wake-robin receives the specific name triphyl- lum from its three ovate, pointed leaflets ; it usually has but two leaves, their stalks green or striped with purple. The spadix, mostly dioecious, is club-shaped, naked above, and in- cluded in the large spathe, which is incurved and hood-like above; it presents a great va- riety in color and markings, being sometimes pale green, more or less marked with purple, and sometimes dark purple with whitish stripes and spots. It is found over a wide extent of country, and extends even to South America. The corm, or "turnip," is flattened, an inch or two in diameter, brownish externally, and white and fleshy within ; its taste is exceed- ingly acrid, producing when only touched to the tongue the sensation of scalding ; this acrid- ity is dissipated by heat and by long drying ; the recently dried root, much less acrid than the fresh, is sometimes used as an expectorant and general stimulant of the secretions. From 10 to 17 per cent, of the corm is pure starch, which when separated is tasteless and may be Wake Robin (Arlssema trlphyllnm). used as a substitute for arrowroot; in Eng- land what is known as Portland arrowroot is made from a related plant, arum maculatum. Another species of aritaema (A. dracontium) is known as green dragon, or dragon root ; it is widely distributed, but less common, and its usually solitary leaf is 1 to 2 ft. long with 7 to 11 leaflets; the greenish, tube-like, pointed spathe is shorter than the spadix. A third species, A. polymorphum, found in the moun- tains of North Carolina, is much like the first named, but its solitary leaf has 3 to 5 leaflets, variable in shape and often lobed. WAK.LET, Thomas, an English physician, born at Membury, Devonshire, in 1795, died in the island of Madeira, May 16, 1862. He studied medicine in London, and began practice in 1817, but in 1823 retired and published the first number of a weekly medical journal, the "London Lancet," his main object in which was to correct deficiencies and introduce im- provements in the various medical institutions of Great Britain. Among these improvements were the public reports of hospital cases and cliniques, the reform of the royal college of surgeons, and the introduction of medical men to the office of coroner. In 1839 he was elect- ed coroner for Middlesex, which office he filled