In the year 1817, an Italian, Della Cella, returning from an expedition of the Egyptian Pasha against the neighboring Arab tribes, reported that he had discovered the ancient silphion growing on the site of old Cyrene. He brought back specimens of the plant which were identified as a species of thapsia. Several expeditions brought back more specimens but there was little general interest until Laval, in 1859, saw the commercial possibilities in a revival of this wonder-medicine and put the famous old cure-all on the market as a specific for consumption, under the name of _silphium Cyrenaicum_, backed by the endorsement of all the ancients from Hippocrates to Pliny. Seldom has even a French or German drug house found so distinguished a company of medical authorities to endorse its wares. Whereat, there began a brisk discussion in the European journals, first, whether the ancient silphion had been found and, secondly, whether, if found, it was worth anything. Both questions being finally decided in the negative, the ancient silphion passes again into the twilight of tradition; all of which entertaining tale may be read at great length in the _Dictionnaire Encyclopædique des Sciences Médicales_, Paris, 1881, Volume 9. Now, with one exception, all the references to _silphium_ in the Index Catalogue refer to this _silphion_ controversy and have nothing to do with our American _silphium_ or _rosin-weed_. The exception is the reference to Dr. Goss, to be related presently. =The American Silphium.= On the American prairies from Ohio south and west to Texas, as far north as Wisconsin and south to Florida, there grows abundantly a plant unknown in Europe and better known here to botanists than to physicians. From the gummy juice that exudes from the leaves and stem, Linnæus himself named the genus _silphium_ in memory of the ancient silphion of Cyrene and the plain people called it _rosin-weed_. There are more than twenty species of rosin-weed or silphium, all probably similar in their medicinal virtues. The species that we have used in hay fever is the _silphium laciniatum (Silphium gummiferum, Ell.)_ This species is known also as the compass-plant or pilot-weed because the large lower leaves present their faces north and south, as we may remember from our boyhood tales of the plains where the trapper never lost his way because he had simply to look down at his feet and there was the compass-plant pointing faithfully to the north.