Botanical Name: Smilax China
Sanskrit Name: Chopchini
English Name: China Root
Family: Liliaceae

Plant part use: Root.

Description of Smilax China:

It has a hard, large, knotty, uneven rhizome, blackish externally, pale coloured or whitish internally. Stem without support, about 3 feet high, but growing much taller if it has a bush to cling to. Leaves thin, membraneous, round, five-nerved acute or obtuse at each end, mucronate at points. Stipules distinct obtuse; umbels greenish yellow, small ten-flowered; fruit red, size of bird cherry. This is the commercial China root, used as a substitute for Sarsaparilla. It is in large ligneous pieces 2 to 6 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter. Odourless, taste at first slightly bitter and acrid like Sarsaparilla. The root-stocks yield a yellow dye with alum and a brown one with sulphate of iron.
 

Chemical Composition.

Besides volatile oil (Pareira, Mat. Med.), resin, starch, coloring matter, calcium oxalate, etc., sarsaparilla root contains several glucosids, to which its peculiar properties are due.

Medical Uses:

Sarsaparilla is generally considered as an alterative, though stated by some to possess diuretic, diaphoretic, and emetic properties. The diseases in which it has been more particularly recommended, are inveterate syphilis, pseudo-syphilis, mercurio-syphilis, and struma in all its forms. It has been used in several chronic diseases, as of the skin, as herpes (best associated with sodium sulphite), rheumatic affections (with potassium iodide), passive general dropsy, gonorrhoeal rheumatism, and other depraved conditions of the system where an alterative is required.

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