Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/730

650 The bark is given internally and is also applied externally when the bones ache during fever (Revd. A Campbell).

An infusion of the bark is used as a nauseating medicine. It is also applied to bruises, mixed with cowdung.

Dr. Moodeen Sheriff has found the drug a good substitute for Ipecacuanha in dysentery. He recommends the powdered pulp as the most convenient form for administration. Dose : 40 grains as an emetic; 15 to 30 grains in dysentery.

The bark of the tree is astringent. In colic, the fruit is rubbed to paste with rice water and applied over the navel (Dymock).

It is also used to poison fish.

The pulp of the fruit is believed by many native practitioners to have also anthelmintic properties, and is sometimes used as an abortifacient. Ground into a coarse powder and applied thus to the tongue and palate, it is highly esteemed as a domestic remedy for the fevers and incidental ailments which children are subject to, while teething (Murray).

Sir James Sawyer of Dublin has used it "as a nervine calmative and antispasmodic in cases in which the vegetable antispasmodics, such as Valerian and Assafcetida, appear to be indicated."

In addition to the substances described later, a minute quantity of an alkaloïd was isolated, but not characterised or identified, and a small amount of lead (0.02 per cent.) was invariably present.

{{smaller|Randiasaponin, a glucoside, forms yellowish plates, or a white, amorphous powder, and melts and decomposes at about 250°. It loses 11*4 per cent, of water at 100° ; the percentage composition of the dry substance is C, 55.52; H, 8.72; O, 35.76. It is not hygroscopic, but dissolves in water to a neutral solution, which froths readily. It is reprecipitated from this solution by moderately strong hydrochloric or sulphuric acid, and is also thrown down by lead acetate and basic acetate as a gelatinous compound, which serves for its purification. It does not reduce alkaline copper solution, except after prolonged hydrolysis with dilute hydrochloric acid, when it is converted into randiasapogenin and two sugars. The osazone of one of these is insoluble in ether, crystallises in yellow crusts, and melts at 166—167°, whilst that of the other is soluble in ether and amorphous, and melts at 176—177°. Randiasaponin, like quillayasapotoxin, has the property of dissolving red blood corpuscles to a clear solution.

{{smaller|Randiasapogenin, C{{sub|26}}H{{sub|50}}O{{sub|9}} (?), the product of the hydrolysis of randiasaponin, forms a friable mass, little soluble in water. It decomposes without}}