Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/83

Rh acute or apiculate, rarely elliptic-lanceolate ; base acute, rounded or cordate. In some varieties, the leaves are subsessile, very narrowly linear, 4-8 by 1/6-⅓in. In a third variety, the leaves are 4-5 by 1in.., shortly petioled, linear-lanceolate. Peduncle ½-1in., 3-5fid. Pedicels short. Calyx minute ; sepals 1/10in. long. Corolla small, straight, rarely 1in. long, narrow, greenish, base moderately inflated, mouth obtusely 5-angled ; lobes short, narrow, erect, fleshy, linear from a triangular base, villous within ; ⅓-½ the length of the tube, purple within. Corona glabrous, lobes minute, or obsolete ; processes filiform, straight. Follicles 4in. long, slender, terete ; pericarp thin. Seeds ⅓in. long, linear oblong, wing membranous.

The part used : — The tubers.

Use: — The tubers of this and several other species of Ceropegia are used and considered to be tonic and digestive. The authors of the Pharmaeographia Indica (Vol. II., p. 456) write : — "The tubers when boiled lose their bitterness, and pulped with milk form a sweet mucilaginous mixture not unlike Salep, which, judging from their chemical composition, should be highly nutritious."

The drug is used in Behar in colds and eye-diseases to cause sneezing ; dose : gr. 1 to ½dram. (Irvine). The tubers yielded on analysis- The bitter principle of the tubers is an Alkaloid, Ceropcgine, soluble in ether, Alcohol and water. The total nitrogen afforded by burning with soda lime was 0.55 per cent. The ash contains Manganese, and is constituted as follows : — [Pharmaeographia Indica, Vol. II— p. 457.]