Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/385

Rh fresh bark is preferable to the dry and old one. In preparing the decoction of the fruit, they should be selected when they are very young or before attaining half of their natural size ; cut into small slices and dry in the sun ; and then their proportion to the water and the method of boiling and straining are exactly the same as in the decoction of root-bark. Tincture : Take of the inner layer of the root-bark or bark, in coarse powder, four ounces ; alcohol or proof spirit, one pint ; macerate for seven days in a closed vessel with occasional agitation, press, filter and add more spirit, if necessary, to make one pint. Powder : The inner layer of the root-bark or bark, or the dry young fruit, may be reduced to powder, passed through a fine sieve and kept in a closed vessel. Of the leaves, nuts and oil — Decoction, paste or poultice and solution. Decoction : Take of the fresh leaves, four ounces ; water, two pints; boil till the liquid is reduced to half of its quantity, and strain when cool. Paste or poultice : Bruise and rub the fresh leaves with hot or cold water in a stone mortar, till they are reduced to a soft and pulpy mass. Solution : Bruise and rub the kernel of the nuts with cocoanut oil, water or some other liquid, in a mortar till it becomes well mixed and thin. The oil is either applied by itself or in combination with other drugs, as chaulmugra oil, &c. Of the flowers — Infusion : Take of the flowers, three ounces ; hot water, one pint or just sufficient to cover the flowers ; infuse in a covered vessel for an hour and strain. Of the gum — Mucilage, which is prepared in the same way as the corresponding preparation of the Indian Gum Arabic, under the head of Preparation, in the article Acacia Arabica. Of the toddy — There is no preparation of the sap or margosa toddy, it being always used alone.

" Doses— -Of the decoction of the root-bark, bark or young fruit, from one-and-a-half to three fluid ounces ; of the tincture of the root-bark or stem bark, from one to three fluid drachms ; and of the powder of any of the above drugs, from one to two drachms; three or four times in the twenty-four hours. Of the infusion of flowers, from one-and-a-half, to three fluid