Sassafras
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Sassafras. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in botany: (1) a genus of Lauraceæ; diœcious, perianth six-parted males with nine fertile stamens in three rows, anthers four-celled; females with nine sterile stamens; fruit fleshy. S. officinale (Laurus sassafras) is a large tree with yellowish flowers, growing in the United States. The dried leaves are very mucilaginous and are sometimes used for thickening soup. S. parthenoxylon, Oriental sassafras, growing in Sumatra, has medicinal qualities like those of S. officinale. (2) The English name of the genus, and of various trees more or less resembling it in properties, specifically, Doryphora sassafras, one of the plume The smells like nutmegs. (Australian.) Brazilian sassafras is Nectandra cymbarum. In pharmacy, the dried root of Sassafras officinale. It is sold in branches, in pieces, or in chips, and is given as a stimulant and diaphoretic in chronic rheumatism, skin diseases, and syphilis. The bark is more powerful than the wood.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an American tree of the laurel family. It is akin to the red bay and benzoin bush. It grows in rich woods from Massachusetts to Kansas and south to the Gulf. Its spicy, aromatic bark is used as a medicine and is chewed by boys like slippery elm bark. An extract affords a favorite flavor for summer drinks. Sidney Lanier represents the sassafras and the persimmon combining to retake possession of old fields in the South. I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of the corn. --Sidney Lanier, Corn.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 recommended sassafras root as "a stimulant and diaphoretic in chronic rheumatism, skin diseases, and syphilis," and Aiton's in 1910 noted its extract as "a favorite flavor for summer drinks" — the flavoring of root beer. In 1960 the US Food and Drug Administration banned safrole, the aromatic compound responsible for that flavour, after animal tests linked it to liver cancer; sassafras root bark and its oil were barred from food, and commercial sassafras tea is now sold safrole-free. Safrole is also now a controlled precursor chemical because it can be converted into MDMA. The tree itself is properly Sassafras albidum rather than Collier's S. officinale, its leaves are still ground into filé powder for Creole gumbo, and since the early 2000s it has been killed in parts of the American Southeast by laurel wilt, a fungal disease carried by the introduced redbay ambrosia beetle.
Written for this edition, 2026.