Page:EB1911 - Volume 06.djvu/717

Rh the American Water Color Society, and became its first president (1866–1867), his own water-colour paintings being particularly fine. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1862. Among his works are “The Ships of the Western Plains,” in the Union League Club, New York; and “The Spanish Peaks, Colorado,” in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

COLMAR, or, a town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, formerly the capital of the department of Haut-Rhin in France, on the Logelbach and Lauch, tributaries of the Ill, 40 m. S.S.W. from Strassburg on the main line of railway to Basel. Pop. (1905) 41,582. It is the seat of the government for Upper Alsace, and of the supreme court of appeal for Alsace-Lorraine. The town is surrounded by pleasant promenades, on the site of the old fortifications, and has numerous narrow and picturesque streets. Of its edifices the most remarkable are the Roman Catholic parish church of St Martin, known also as the Münster, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, the Lutheran parish church (15th century), the former Dominican monastery (1232–1289), known as “Unterlinden” and now used as a museum, the Kaufhaus (trade-hall) of the 15th century, and the handsome government offices (formerly the Prefecture). Colmar is the centre of considerable textile industries, comprising wool, cotton and silk-weaving, and has important manufactures of sewing thread, starch, sugar and machinery. Bleaching and brewing are also carried on, and the neighbourhood is rich in vineyards and fruit-gardens. The considerable trade of the place is assisted by a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Imperial Bank (Reichsbank).

Colmar (probably the columbarium of the Romans) is first mentioned, as a royal villa, in a charter of Louis the Pious in 823, and it was here that Charles the Fat held a diet in 884. It was raised to the status of a town and surrounded with walls by Wölfelin, advocate (Landvogt) of the emperor Frederick II. in Alsace, a masterful and ambitious man, whose accumulated wealth was confiscated by the emperor in 1235, and who is said to have been murdered by his wife lest her portion should also be seized. In 1226 Colmar became an imperial city, and the civic rights (Stadtrecht) conferred on it in 1274 by Rudolph of Habsburg became the model for those of many other cities. Its civic history is much the same as that of other medieval towns: a struggle between the democratic gilds and the aristocratic “families,” which ended in 1347 in the inclusion of the former in the governing body, and in the 17th century in the complete exclusion of the latter. In 1255 Colmar joined the league of Rhenish cities, and in 1476 and 1477 took a vigorous share in the struggle against Charles the Bold. In 1632, during the Thirty Years’ War, it was taken by the Swedes, and in 1635 by the French, who held it till after the Peace of Westphalia (1649). In 1673 the French again occupied it and dismantled the fortifications. In 1681 it was formally annexed to France by a decree of Louis XIV.’s Chambre de Réunion, and remained French till 1871, when it passed with Alsace-Lorraine to the new German empire.

See “Annalen und Chronik von Kolmar,” German translation, G. H. Pabst, in Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit (2nd ed., G. Wattenbach, Leipzig, 1897); Sigmund Billing, Kleine Chronik der Stadt Kolmar (Colmar, 1891); Hund, Kolmar vor und während seiner Entwickelung zur Reichsstadt (Strassburg, 1899); J. Liblin, Chronique de Colmar, 58-1400 (Mülhausen, 1867–1868); T. F. X. Hunkler, ''Gesch. der Stadt Kolmar'' (Colmar, 1838). For further references see Ulysse Chevalier, ''Répertoire des sources. Topobibliographie (Montbéliard, 1894–1899); and Waltz, Bibliographie de la ville de Colmar'' (Mülhausen, 1902).

 COLNE, a market town and municipal borough in the Clitheroe parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 34 m. N. by E. from Manchester by the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway; it is served also by a branch of the Midland railway from Skipton. Pop. (1901) 23,000. It stands on a hilly site above a small affluent of the river Calder. The church of St Bartholomew retains some Norman work, but is chiefly of various later periods. There is a cloth hall or piece hall, originally used as an exchange when woollens were the staple of the town. The grammar school is of interest as the place where John Tillotson (1630–1694), archbishop of Canterbury, received early education. Colne is a place of great antiquity, and many Roman coins have been found on the site. As early as the 14th century it was the seat of a woollen manufacture; but its principal manufactures now are cottons, printed calicoes and muslin. In the neighbourhood are several limestone and slate quarries. The town was incorporated in 1895, and the corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 5063 acres.

 COLOCYNTH, or, Citrullus Colocynthis, a plant of the natural order Cucurbitaceae. The flowers are unisexual; the male blossoms have five stamens with sinuous anthers, the female have reniform stigmas, and an ovary with three large fleshy placentas. The fruit is round, and about the size of an orange; it has a thick yellowish rind, and a light, spongy and very bitter pulp, which yields the colocynth of druggists. The seeds, which number from 200 to 300, and are disposed in vertical rows on the three parietal placentas of the fruit, are flat and ovoid and dark-brown; they are used as food by some of the tribes of the Sahara, and a coarse oil is expressed from them. The pulp contains only about 3.5% of fixed oil, whilst the seeds contains about 15%. The foliage resembles that of the cucumber, and the root is perennial. The plant has a wide range, being found in Ceylon, India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, North Africa, the Grecian Archipelago, the Cape Verd Islands, and the south-east of Spain. The term pakkuoth, translated “wild gourds” in 2 Kings iv. 39, is thought to refer to the fruit of the colocynth; but, according to Dr Olaf Celsius (1670–1756), a Swedish theologian and naturalist, it signifies a plant known as the squirting cucumber, Ecbalium Elaterium.

The commercial colocynth consists of the peeled and dried fruits. In the preparation of the drug, the seeds are always removed from the pulp. Its active principle is an intensely bitter amorphous or crystalline glucoside, colocynthin, C56H84O23, soluble in water, ether and alcohol, and decomposable by acids into glucose and a resin, colocynthein, C40H54O13. Colocynthein also occurs as such in the drug, together with at least two other resins, citrullin and colocynthiden. Colocynthin has been used as a hypodermic purgative—a class of drugs practically nonexistent, and highly to be desired in numberless cases of apoplexy. The dose recommended for hypodermic injection is fifteen minims of a 1% solution in glycerin.

The British Pharmacopeia contains a compound extract of colocynth, which no one ever uses; a compound pill—dose 4 to 8 grains—in which oil of cloves is included in order to relieve the griping caused by the drug; and the Pilula Colocynthidis et Hyoscyami, which contains 2 parts of the compound pill to 1 of extract of hyoscyamus. This is by far the best preparation, the hyoscyamus being added to prevent the pain and griping which is attendant on the use of colocynth alone. The official dose of this pill is 4 to 8 grains, but the most effective and least disagreeable manner in which to obtain its action is to give four two-grain pills at intervals of an hour or so.

In minute doses colocynth acts simply as a bitter, but is never given for this purpose. In ordinary doses it greatly increases the secretion of the small intestine and stimulates its muscular coat. The gall-bladder is also stimulated, and the biliary function of the liver, so that colocynth is both an excretory and a secretory cholagogue. The action which follows hypodermic injection is due to the excretion of the drug from the blood into the alimentary canal. Though colocynth is a drastic hydragogue cathartic, it is desirable, as a rule, to supplement its action by some drug, such as aloes, which acts on the large intestine, and a sedative must always be added. Owing to its irritant properties, the drug must not be used habitually, but it is very valuable in initiating the treatment of simple chronic constipation, and its pharmacological properties obviously render it especially useful in cases of hepatitis and congestion of the liver.

Colocynth was known to the ancient Greek, Roman and Arabic physicians; and in an Anglo-Saxon herbal of the 11th century (Cockayne, Leechdoms, &c., vol. i. p. 325, London, 1864), the following directions are given as to its use:—“For stirring of the