The plant is cultivated for medicinal use, and also for ornament. The Abbé Armand David[34] saw in northern Sz-chuen (Setchuan) fields planted with Aconite (A. Napellus?).
History—The Ἀκόνιτον of the Greeks and the Aconitum of the Romans are held to refer to the genus under notice, if not precisely to A. Napellus. The ancients were well aware of the poisonous properties of the aconites, though the plants were not more exactly distinguished until the close of the middle ages. The Greek name is supposed to refer to the same source as that of Conium. (See article on Fructus Conii.)
Aconite has been widely employed as an arrow-poison. It was used by the ancient Chinese,[35] and is still in requisition among the less civilized of the hill tribes of India. Something of the same kind was in vogue among the aborigines of ancient Gaul.[36] Aconite was pointed out in the thirteenth century, in “The Physicians of Myddvai,”[37] as one of the plants which every physician is to grow.
Störck of Vienna introduced aconite into regular practice about the year 1762[38]; the root and the herb occur in the German pharmaceutical tariff of the seventeenth century.
Description—The herbaceous annual stem of aconite starts from an elongated conical tuberous root 2 to 4 inches long and sometimes as much as an inch in thickness. This root tapers off in a long tail, while numerous branching rootlets spring from its sides. If dug up in the summer it will be found that a second and younger root (occasionally a third) is attached to it near its summit by a very short branch and is growing out of it on one side. This second root has a bud at the top which is destined to produce the stem of the next season. It attains its maximum development at the latter part of the year, the parent root meanwhile becoming shrivelled and decayed. This form of growth is therefore analogous to that of an orchis.
The dried root is more or less conical or tapering, enlarged and knotty at the summit which is crowned with the base of the stem. It is from 2 to 3 or 4 inches long and at the top from ½ to 1 inch thick. The tuber-like portion of the root is more slender, much shrivelled longitudinally, and beset with the prominent bases of rootlets. The drug is of a dark brown; when dry it breaks with a short fracture exhibiting a white and farinaceous, or brownish, or grey inner substance sometimes hollow in the centre. A transverse section of a sound root shows a pure white central portion (pith) which is many-sided and has at each of its projecting angles a thin fibro-vascular bundle.
In the fresh state the root of aconite has a sharp odour of radish which disappears on drying. Its taste which is at first sweetish soon becomes alarmingly acrid, accompanied with sensations of tingling and numbness.
Microscopic Structure—The tuberous root as seen in a transverse section, consists of a central part enclosed by a delicate cambial zone. The outer part of this central portion exhibits a thin brownish layer made up of a single row of cells (Kernscheide of the Germans). This is more distinctly obvious in the rootlets, which also show numerous, scattered, thick-walled cells of a yellow colour.
The fibro-vascular bundles of aconite root are devoid of true ligneous cells; its tissue is for the largest part built up of uniform parenchymatous cells loaded with starch granules.
Chemical Composition—Aconite contains chemical principles which are of great interest on account of their virulent effects on the animal economy.