Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/278

198 Seeds glabrous, embedded in silky wool. This is the silk-cotton tree of the Konkan.

Parts used : — The gum, seed, fruit, tap-root, bark,' cotton and flower.

Uses : — The gam or dried juice, mocha-ras, which the tree yields, is used as an aphrodisiac. The root has stimulant and tonic properties. The bark and the root are emetic. The young roots, dried in the shade and powdered, form the chief ingredient in the músla-semul, a medicine highly thought of as an aphrodisiac ; it is also given in impotence. The gum contains a large proportion of tannic and gallic acids, and may be successfully employed in cases requiring astringents. The gum has also tonic and alterative properties, and is used in diarrhœa, dysentery, and menorrhagia.

The dry flowers, with poppy seeds, goats' milk, and sugar, are boiled and inspissated, and of this conserve two drachms are given three times a day in hæmorrhoids (Medical Topography of Dacca, by Dr. Taylor).

" Its gum is useful in diarrhœa ; dose : 20-30 grs., with equal parts of sugar (Surg. T. Anderson, Bijnor;. The taproot is used for gonorrhœa and dysentery (Mukerji, Cuttack). The leaves, singed and beaten, or rubbed with water to a pulp, make a useful application to glandular swellings (Forsyth). Watt's Diet. i. 491.

The gum is astringent and demulcent ; the seeds nutrient and demulcent ; the young fruit stimulant, diuretic, tonic, aphrodisiac, expectorant, and exercises a great beneficial influence over the membranes of the genito-urinary organs ; the tap-root is demulcent, tonic, slightly diuretic, and aphrodisiac ; the bark is demulcent, diuretic, tonic, and slightly astringent ; and the cotton is employed only externally for its mechanical properties (softness and elasticity) in padding splints and covering burned and inflamed surfaces, &c.

The gum is useful in diarrhœa, dysentery and other affections in which kino and catechu are beneficial. The therapeutic uses of the seeds are similar to those of the seeds