Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/800

720 Drs. Letheby and Hassall undertook to ascertain the effects of roasted chicory on the human system. Three persons partook of a chicory breakfast ; the infusion was dark colored, thick, destitute of the agreeable and refreshing aroma so characteristic of coffee, and was of a bitter taste. Each individual experienced for sometime after drinking the fusion, a sensation of heaviness, drowsiness, a feeling of weight at the stomach, and great indisposition to exertion ; in two headache set in, and in the third diarrhoea came on. Hence the wholesome properties of chicory as an article of diet are questionable. There is hardly any advantage of the admixture of chicory with coffee. Chicory, from its narcotic character, exerts an injurious effect on the nervous system ; according to some oculists, chicory-coffee is considered as among the causes of amaurotic blindness.

Vern. : — Kásni (H. and Pers.) ; Káshini-virai (Tam.); Koshee (Tel.) ; Saz-e-hand ( Cashmere).

English : — The garden endive.

Habitat : — Northern India.

It resembles the preceding species, but is more glabrous.

Uses : — It is much valued by the Hakims as a resolvent and cooling medicine, and is prescribed in bilious complaints much as Taraxacum is with us (Dymock).

The root is used in dyspepsia and fever as a tonic and demulcent ; fruit, a cooling remedy for fever, headache and jaundice. (T. X. Mukerji.)

The root is considered warm, stimulating and febrifuge ; given in "Munjus," the diluent taken preparatory to purging; the seed is used in sherbets (Irvine).

Vern. :— Dúdal ; Baran ; Kanphúl ; Dudlî ; Shamooke (Pb.); Buthur (Sind.) ; Pathree (Dec).

Habitat: — Throughout the Himalaya and Western Tibet, and the Mishmi Mountains.

A scapigorous, milky herb, perennial. Root vertical. Leaves all radical, glabrous, or crown and scape woolly ; leaves, sessile, oblanceolate or linear, entire, toothed, pinnatifld or runcinate ;