the materia medica, a root brought from Turkey. It is of the shape of a heart flattened, of a white colour, compact, yet easy to cut or powder; of a viscid sweetish taste, with a slight degree of acrimony. Hermodactyls were of great repute among the ancients as a cathartic; but those we now meet with in the shops have very little purgative virtue; Neumann declares he never found them to have any effect at all.—The hermodactyl is the root of the Col- chicum variegatum, according to some; others suppose it to be the root of the Iris tuberosa.