in the Materio Medica, a root brought from Turkey. It is of the shape of a heart flatted, of a white colour, compact, yet easy to be cut or powdered; of a viscous sweetish taste, with a light 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 colchicum variegatum, according to some; others suppose it to be the root of the iris tuberosa.