Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/572

492 pair ; leaflets 3-4 pair, l-2in. long, glabrous, shining, oblong or obovate, obtuse or acute, rigidly coriaceous. Flowers 1/12-⅛in. long, pale yellow, crowded in long slender spikes from the axils of the upper leaves, or arranged in terminal panicle. Spikes peduncled, ½ft. long or more, usually panicled from the nodes of old leafless branches. Pedicels short, or absent. Calyx shortly 5-tootbed ; petals 5, stamens free, 10, exserted, anthers tipped with glabrous, deciduous glands. Pods woody, 2- 4ft., or more by 4-5in., curved, constricted between the seeds, consisting of 10-30, one-seeded, flat, square or nearly orbicular joints, the valves thick, separating from the thick rim. Seeds 2in. broad, flat, nearly orbicular, brown, shining, testa hard. The seeds are eaten after being roasted.

Uses : — The kernel of the seeds is employed by the Hill people as a febrifuge. In Java, employed as emetic (DRURY).

An infusion of the spongy fibres of the trunk is used with advantage for various affections of the skin in the Philippines. (Dalzell and Gibson). The seeds are used in pains of the loins and debility (WATT.)

The properties of the seeds do not appear to have been tested in European practice (DYMOCK).

Powdered kernel, mixed with some few spices, is commonly taken by native women for some days immediately after delivery, for allaying the bodily pains and warding off cold (WATT).

Crude saponin was extracted from the seeds after removal of the fat by means of 90 per cent alcohol, and precipitated by ether from the cold alcoholic extract. By precipitation with barium hydroxide solution, a saponin, named " Saponin A. " was removed from the aqueous solution of this crude saponin. The solution thus freed from "Saponin A " was evaporated to dryness, after removing the excess of barium hydroxide, the dry residue extracted with hot 90 per cent, alcohol, and the alcoholic solution fractionally precipitated with chloroform and ether. The aqueous solution of the ether precipitate was dialysed, and the residue evaporated to dryness in vacua over sulphuric acid. " Saponin B " C15H22O10 was thus obtained as a whitish hygroscopic powder, which became brownish on heating to 110°C. It was precipitated from strong aqueous solutions by basic, but not by normal lead acetate. It gave a dark reddish-violet color, with strong sulphuric acid, eventually turning brown. On hydrolysis, a sugar identical with galactose, a sapogeninsoluble in ether and in alcohol, and another body insoluble in those solvents and in ammonia, were formed.— J. S. Ch. I. 16-5-1904, p. 502.