Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/368

288 A large evergreen shrub, with bitter and somewhat fetid properties. Branchlets, leaves, and inflorescence tawny-pubescent. Leaves very large, often more than a foot long, " covered with a dense yellow pubescence, especially on the veins beneath " (Alfred V. Bennett). The lowest leaflets sometimes compound, the upper ones numerous, very closely toothed or serrate, villous beneath and opposite, 4-6 pair, ovate-lanceolate. Flowers purple, in small distant racemiform panicles, often as long as leaves. Flowers usually hermaphrodite ; Calyx very minute. Petals larger than the Calyx-segments, linear, spathulate. Stamens short, not exceeding the petals in length. Ovary deeply 4-lobed. Drupes entirely free, black, ovoid, ¼in. long (Brandis., 1/6-⅛in. (Bennett;, glabrous, reticulated. Albumen 0.

Uses : — Roxburgh wrote : " From the sensible qualities of the green parts of this plant being somewhat fetid, and simply, though intensely, bitter, it promises to be as good an antidy-senterical medicine as Bruce's Abyssinian Wooginos itself."

Dr. Mougeot, whose investigaiions into the subject of a cure for dysentery have been attracting attention in Saigon for sometime past, now claims to have discovered a remedy for the disease. This is the seed of the plant named Brucea Sumatrana, belonging to the family Simarubaceœ, which is found in those parts of Southern China, Lower India, the island of Sunda and tropical America where the malady prevails in its more virulent form. Both the tree and its seed are known in the vernacular of its habitat by the name of kosu or kosam. It may be remembered that several years ago the scientist, Roger, discovered a bacillus which was held to be the cause of dysentery. In experiments which he conducted upon animals, Dr. Mougeot found that, wherever these bacteria were most numerous iu the bowels, the use of the kosu seed, which, by the way, is about a centimetre in length and lies hidden within a small oily kernel, led to their utter destruction. He usually administered from six to ten seeds on the first day and twelve on the second, in which time a change for the better generally became apparent. Eight hundred and seventy-one out of eight hundred and seventy-nine cases experimented upon by Dr. Mougeot, proved successful. — Indian Lancet for 10th June, 1901.

Messrs F. B. Power and F. H. Lees find that the seeds contain a small quantity of a hydrolytic enzyme, but no alkaloid ; they contain 1.8 per cent, of tannin. The combined alcoholic and petroleum extracts of the seeds yielded the following substances : (1) A small quantity of a mixture of esters, probably of one of the butyric acids, and having the odour of the crushed seeds ; (2) a very small amount of free formic acid ; (3) 20 per cent, (on the weight of the seeds) of a fatty oil consisting chiefly of the glycerides of oleic, linolic, stearic, and palmitic acids, together with a saturated hydrocarbon,