Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/78

828 Uses : — The dried leaves are emetic, diaphoratic and expectorant, useful in over-loaded states of the stomach and other cases requiring the use of emetics. It has also been found useful in dysentery, catarrh, and other affections in which Ipecacuanha has been employed (Pharm. Ind.) Roxburgh, in his Flora Indica, gives a long account of the use of this plant as a substitute for Ipecacuanha : —

" On the coast of Coromandel, the roots of this plant have often been used as a substitute for Ipecacuanha. I have often prescribed it myself, and always found it answer as well as I could expect Ipecacuanha to do. I have also often had very favorable reports of its effects from others. It was a very useful medicine with our Europeans who were unfortunately prisoners with Hydar Ally, during the war of 1780, 1781, 1782, and 1783. In a pretty large dose, it answered as an emetic ; in smaller doses, often repeated, as a cathartic, and in both ways, very effectually.

" I had made and noted down many observations of its uses, when in large practice in the General Hospital at Madras in 1776, 1777, and 1778, but lost them, with all my other papers, by the storm and inundation at and near Coringa in May 1787. I cannot therefore be so full on the virtues of this valuable, though much neglected, root, as I could wish. I have no doubt but it would answer every purpose of Ipecacuanha.

" The natives also employ it as an emetic ; the bark, of about three or four inches, of the fresh root, they rub upon a stone, and mix with a little water for a dose ; it generally purges at the same time."

" Dr. Russell was informed by the Physician General at Madras (Dr. J. Anderson) that he had many years before known it used, both by the European and Native Troops, with great success in the dysentry which happened at that time to be epidemic in the camp. The store of Ipecacuanha had, it seems, been wholly expended, and Dr, Anderson, finding the practice