Populus tremuloides - American poplar, White poplar, Quaking aspen
"CONSTITUENTS: The important constituents are populin and salicin, a resin and essential oil. The buds contain an acid resin.
PREPARATIONS: Powdered bark. Dose: one dram two or three times a day. Saturated tincture of the bark, from one-half to twenty drops. Populin, one-tenth of a grain.
Therapy: The older writers were enthusiastic concerning the tonic and antiperiodic properties of this drug. They claimed that it would replace quinine in the treatment of intermittency. It has never come into general use. A recent writer says that he soon learned that a strong infusion of the bark would cure those forms of intermittent fever, of a chronic or irregular character. At the same time the pathological lesions of the liver, spleen and kidneys which accompanied the chronic disorder, would gradually disappear with the ultimate complete restoration of their physiological functions. These results were accomplished without the unpleasant effects that occur after the protracted use of quinine. This writer, passing through an epidemic of severe malarial disease, found that malarial hematuria was very common and very hard to cure. He put his patients upon the infusion of cottonwood bark, and found the symptoms to yield rapidly, not only the hemorrhage, but the icterus, and other conditions depending upon disarrangement of the liver and-stomach. He found that results obtained by this remedy were more permanent than those obtained by the use of quinine in some cases...."
(Finley Ellingwood: The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1915)