Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/724

644 exfoliating in irregularly shaped, softish scales e Wood white when cut up fresh ; if cut up dry, brownish grey, soft. Leaves opposite ovate-elliptic or almost orbicular, abruptly acominate, finely pubescent on both surfaces, 4-10 by 3-5in. ; membranous, narrowed into a petiole l-3in. ; nerves 7-10 pair ; stipules broad, recurved, usually glandular serrate. Flowers pedicillate, white, fragrant, in dense cylindrical compound ; racemes in terminal drooping panicles, with linear or lanceolate bracts, as long as or longer than the flowers (Brandis). Corolla-tube slender, more than 3 times the length of the Calyx lobes, 1/6in. Stamens 5. Filament dilated. Anthers linear. Ovary 2-celled, style long, exserted. Stigma spindle-shaped. Capsules ¾-1in., on recurved thick pedicels, ¼-½in. long, even ⅔in., ellipsoid, many-seeded. Seeds flat, lenticular, winged all round the margin, ⅓ by 1/10. including the wing.

Uses : — The inner bark is bitter and astringent, and is used as a febrifuge. The outer layer of the bark is tasteless. The Pharm. Indica suggests that in all future enquiries into the subject of Indian antiperiodics. this bark should be one of the first to which attention should be directed.

Regarding the constituents of the bark, Messrs. Charles Stanley Gibson and John Lionel Simonsen write in the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1916, pp. 161-162:—

This bark was first subjected to a chemical examination by Broughton in 1870, and subsequently Naylor (Pharm. Journ. 1893, 14. 311, 1884, 15, 195) investigated it much more thoroughly. Broughton showed that it contained a glucoside, aesculin, and that on keeping the bark lost its bitter flavour owing to the hydrolysis of the glucoside with formation of aesculetin (scopoletin). Naylor, on the other hand, succeeded in isolating a crystalline alkaloid to which he gave the name hymenodyctine and the formula C24H40N3 and also an amorphous neutral substance of the formula C22H43G10. *

From the results obtained by Naylor it seemed possible to us that the alkaloid might be of therapeutic value and furthermore, since it was one of the few alkaloids which do not contain oxygen, it should be of considerable scientific interest, and we decided, therefore, to attempt its isolation.

We have isolated aesculin and scopoletin, but we have been unable to find any traces of an alkaloid. It would, therefore, appear that Naylor cannot have


 * This formula is obviously incorrect, containing as it does an odd number of hydrogen atoms,