Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/145

 with honey. A decoction of the root-bark is used as a wash for unhealthy ulcers, and is said to improve their appearance and promote cicatrization. * * Rasot, mixed with honey, is said to be an useful application to aphthous sores." (Dutt's Materia Medica of the Hindus).

50. B. Lycium, Boyle, 10.

Vern.:—The same as those for B. aristata.

Habitat:—Western Himalaya, in dry, hot places, from Garhwal to Hazara, Jaunsar, Tehri and Garhwal, outer Himalayas 3-7,000 ft. Simla, 9,000 ft.

An erect rigid shrub. Bark white or pale grey. Branches angular. Leaves sessile or subsessile, tough, coriaceous, narrowly-lanceolate, obovate, oblong, sub-persistent, not lacunose, 1½-2½ by ⅓-½ in., inner ovate, very spinulose, or the teeth few and small or entire (Collett.); upper surface bright green, lower paler; venation lax. Racemes shortly stalked, simple or compound, longer than the leaves, often corymbose, drooping, barely longer than the leaves. Flowers pale yellow, stalks slender, ½ in., style short, but distinct. Berry ovoid, violet, covered with bloom.

Part used:—The extract, known as Rasout. Rasot or Rasavanti, used as an antidote against opium-habit, by Bhagwanlal Indraji (Pandit J. Indraji.)

Dr. Royle says:—"I have myself occasionally prescribed it, and the native mode of application makes it peculiarly eligible in cases succeeding acute inflammation, when the eye remains much swollen. The extract is, by native practitioners, in such cases rubbed into a proper consistence with a little water, sometimes with the addition of opium and alum, and applied in a thick layer over the swollen eyelids; the addition of a little oil I have found preferable, as preventing the too rapid desiccation. Patients generally express themselves as experiencing considerable relief from the application."

It is mentioned by the author of the Periplus, who lived about the first century, as an export from the Indies, and that