FRUCTUS COLOCYNTHIDIS. Colocynth, Coloquintida, Bitter Apple; F. Coloquinte; G. Coloquinthe. Botanical Origin-Citrullus Colocynthis Schrader (Cucumis Colocynthis L.)-The colocynth gourd is a slender scabrous plant with a perennial root, native of warm and dry regions in the Old World, over which it has an extensive area. Commencing eastward, it occurs in abundance in the arid districts of the Punjab and Sind, in sandy places on the Coromandel coast, in Ceylon, Persia as far north as the Caspian, in Arabia (Aden), Syria, and in some of the Greek islands. It is found in immense quantities in Upper Egypt and Nubia, and throughout North Africa to Morocco and Senegambia, in the Cape de Verd Islands, and on maritime sands in the south-east of Spain. Finally, it is said to have been collected in Japan. History-Colocynth was familiar to the Greek and Roman, as well as to the Arabian physicians; and if we may judge by the mention of it in an Anglo-Saxon herbal of the 11th century,' was not then unknown in Britain. The drug was collected in Spain at an early period, as is evident from an Arabic calendar of A.D. 961, lately published together with an ancient Latin version.2 The plant has been long cultivated in Cyprus, and its fruit is mentioned in the 14th century as one of the more important products of the island.3 Description-The colocynth plant bears a gourd of the size and shape of an orange, having a smooth, marbled-green surface. It is sometimes imported simply dried, in which case it is of a brown colour; but far more usually it is found in the market, peeled with a knife and dried. It then forms light, pithy, nearly white balls, which consist of the dried internal pulp of the fruit with the seeds imbedded in it. This pulp is nearly inodorous, but has an intensely bitter taste, perceptible by reason of its dust when the drug is slightly handled. The balls are generally more or less broken; when dried too slowly they have a light brown colour. The seeds are disposed in vertical rows on 3 thick parietal placenta, which project to the centre of the fruit, then divide and turn back, forming two branches directed towards one another. Owing to this structure, the fruit easily breaks up vertically into 3 wedges in each of which are lodged 2 rows of dark brown seeds. The seeds, of which a fruit contains from 200 to 300, are of flattened ovoid form, of an inch long by broad, not bordered. The testa which is hard and thick, having its surface minutely granulated, is marked on each side of its more pointed end by two furrows directed towards the hilum. The seed, as in other Cucurbitaceæ, is exalbuminous, and has thick oily cotyledons, enclosing an embryo with short straight radicle directed towards the hilum. Colocynth fruits are mostly supplied by wholesale druggists, broken up and having the seeds removed, the drug in such case being called Colocynth Pulp or Pith. Microscopic Structure-The pulp is made up of large thin-walled 1 Cockayne, Leechdoms, &c. i. (1864) 325. 2 Le Calendrier de Cordoue, publié par R. Dozy, Leyde, 1873. 92. 3 De Mas Latrie, Hist. de l'ile de Chypre, iii. (1852-61) 498. parenchymatous cells, their outer layer consisting of rows of smaller cells more densely packed. The tissue is irregularly traversed by fibrovascular bundles, and also exhibits numerous large intercellular spaces. The cells contain but an insignificant amount of minute granules, to which neither iodine nor a persalt of iron imparts any coloration. The tissue is not much swollen by water, although one part of the pulp easily retains from 10 to 12 parts of water like a sponge. Chemical Composition-The bitter principle has been examined by Walz (1858). He treated alcoholic extract of colocynth with water, and mixed the solution firstly with neutral acetate of lead and subsequently with basic acetate of lead. From the filtered liquid the lead was separated by means of sulphuretted hydrogen, and then tannic acid added to it. The latter caused the colocynthin to be precipitated; the precipitate washed and dried was decomposed by oxide of lead, and finally the colocynthin was dissolved out by ether. Walz thus obtained about per cent. of a yellowish mass or tufts, which he considered as possessing crystalline structure and to which he gave the name Colocynthin. He assigns to it the formula C56H8402, which in our opinion requires further investigation. Colocynthin is a violent purgative. Colocynthin is decomposed according to Walz by boiling dilute hydrochloric acid, and then yields Colocyntheïn, C44H64018, and grape sugar. The same chemist termed Colocynthitin that part of the alcoholic extract of colocynth which is soluble in ether but not in water. Purified with boiling alcohol, colocynthitin forms a tasteless crystalline powder. The pulp perfectly freed from seeds and dried at 100° C., afforded us 11 per cent. of ash; the seeds alone yield only 27 per cent. They have, even when crushed, but a faint bitter taste and contain 17 per cent. of fat oil. Commerce-The drug is imported from Mogador, Spain and Syria. Uses-In the form of an extract made with weak alcohol, and combined with aloes and scammony, colocynth is much employed as a purgative. The seeds roasted or boiled, are the miserable food of some of the poorest tribes of the Sahara.1 Substitutes-Cucumis trigonus Roxb. (C. Pseudo-colocynthis Royle), a plant of the plains of Northern India, with spherical or elongated, sometimes obscurely trigonous, bitter fruits, prostrate rooting stems and deeply divided leaves, resembles the colocynth gourd and has been mistaken for it. Another species named by Royle C. Hardwickii and known to the natives of India as Hill Colocynth, has oval oblong bitter fruits, but leaves entirely unlike those of Citrullus Colocynthis. UMBELLIFERÆE. HERBA HYDROCOTYLES. Indian Hydrocotyle, Indian Pennywort; F. Bevilacqua, Botanical Origin-Hydrocotyle asiatica L., a small creeping herb, See my paper on Cucumis Colocynthis considered as a nutritive plant in the Archiv der Pharmacie, 201 (1872) 235.- with slender jointed stems, common in moist places throughout tropical Asia and Africa, occurring also in America from South Carolina to Valdivia, in the West Indies, the islands of the Pacific, New Zealand, and Australia. 2 In History The plant was known to Rheede1 by its Malyalim name of Codagam (or Kutakan), and also to Rumphius. It has been long used medicinally by the natives of Java and of the Coromandel coast. 1852, Boileau, a French physician of Mauritius, pointed out its virtues in the treatment of leprosy, for which disease it was largely tried in the hospitals of Madras by Hunter in 1855. It has since been admitted to a place in the Pharmacopoeia of India. 4 Description-The peduncles and petioles are fascicled; the latter are frequently 24 inches long; the peduncles are shorter and bear a 3or 4-flowered simple umbel with very short rays. The leaves are reniform, crenate, to 2 inches in longest diameter, 7-nerved, glabrous, or when young somewhat hairy on the under side. The fruit is laterally compressed, orbicular, acute on the back; the mericarps reticulated, sometimes a little hairy, with 3 to 5 curved ribs; they are devoid of vittæ. The main root is an inch or two long, but roots are also thrown out by the procumbent stem. When fresh, the herb is said to be aromatic and of a disagreeable bitter and pungent taste; but these qualities appear to be lost in drying. Chemical Composition-An analysis of hydrocotyle has been made by Lépine, a pharmacien of Pondicherry," who found it to yield a somewhat peculiar body which he called Vellarin, from Vallárai, the Tamil name of the plant, and regarded as its active principle. Vellarin, which is said to be obtainable from the dry plant to the extent of 0.8 to 10 per cent., is an oily, non-volatile liquid with the smell and taste of fresh hydrocotyle, soluble in spirit of wine, ether, caustic ammonia, and partially also in hydrochloric acid. These singular properties do not enable us to rank vellarin in any well-characterised class of organic compounds. By exhausting 3 ounces of the dried herb with rectified spirit, we did not obtain anything like vellarin, but simply a green extract almost entirely soluble in warm water, and containing chiefly tannic acid which produced an abundant green precipitate with salts of iron. With caustic potash, neither the herb nor its extract evolved any nauseous odour. The dried plant afforded Lépine 13 per cent. of ash. Uses-As an alterative tonic, hydrocotyle is allowed to be of some utility, but the power claimed for it by Boileau of curing leprosy is generally denied. Dorvault regards it as belonging to the class of narcotico-acrid poisons such as hemlock, but we see no evidence to warrant such an opinion. Besides being administered internally, it is sometimes locally applied in the form of a poultice. Boileau says that the entire plant is preferable to the leaves alone. 1 Hort. Mal. x. tab. 46. Herb. Amboin. v. 169. 3 Bouton, Med. Plants of Mauritius, 1857 73-83. Medical Reports, Madras, 1855. 356. Journ. de Pharm. xxviii. (1855) 47. 7 L'Officine (1872) 554. It is probably by oversight that the leaves alone are ordered in the Pharmacopoeia of India. Substitutes (?)—H. rotundifolia Roxb., another species common in India, may be known from H. asiatica by having 10 or more flowers in an umbel and much smaller fruits. The European H. vulgaris L., easily distinguishable from the allied tropical species just described, by having its leaves orbicular and peltate (not reniform), is said to possess deleterious properties. FRUCTUS CONII. Hemlock fruits; F. Fruits de Ciguë; G. Schierlingsfrucht. Botanical Origin-Conium maculatum L, an erect biennial herbaceous plant, flourishing by the sides of fields and streams, and in neglected spots of cultivated ground, throughout temperate Europe and Asia. It occurs in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands, and has been naturalized in North and South America. But the plant is very unevenly distributed, and in many districts is entirely wanting. It is found in most parts of Britain from Kent and Cornwall to the Orkneys. History-The Cicuta of the Romans and Kovelov of the Greeks was the plant under notice. The famous hemlock potion of the latter, by which criminals were put to death, was essentially composed of the juice of this plant. The old Roman name Cicuta was subsequently applied to Cicuta virosa L., another umbelliferous plant which is altogether wanting in Greece and in Southern Europe generally, and does not contain any poisonous alkaloid. 1 Hemlock was used in Anglo-Saxon medicine. It is mentioned as early as the 10th century in the vocabulary of Alfric, archbishop of Canterbury, as "Cicuta, hemlic." Its use in modern medicine is due chiefly to the recommendation of Störck of Vienna, since whose time (1760) the plant has been much employed. The extreme uncertainty and even inertness of its preparations, which had long been known to physicians and had caused its rejection by many, have been recently investigated by Harley. The careful experiments of this physician show what are the real powers of the drug, and by what method its active properties may be utilized. Description-The fruit has the structure usual to the order; it is broadly ovoid, somewhat compressed laterally, and constricted towards the commissure, attenuated towards the apex, which is crowned with a depressed stylopodium. As met with in the shops, it consists of the separated mericarps which are about of an inch long. The dorsal surface of these has 5 prominent longitudinal ridges, the edges of which are marked with little protuberances giving them a jagged or crenate outline, which is most conspicuous before the fruits are fully ripe. The furrows are glabrous but slightly wrinkled longitudinally; they are devoid of vittæ. When a mericarp is cut transversely, the seed exhibits a reniform outline, due to a deep furrow in the albumen on the side of the commissure. The fruits of hemlock are dull greenish grey, and have but little taste and smell; but when triturated with a solution of caustic alkali they evolve a strong and offensive odour. Microscopic Structure-Hemlock fruits differ from other fruits 1 Volume of Vocabularies, edited by 2 Pharm. Journ. viii. (1867), ix. (1868). Wright, 1857. 31. of the order by the absence of vittæ. In the endocarp, there is a peculiar layer of small nearly cubic cells surrounding the albumen. The cells of the endocarp are loaded with a brown liquid consisting chiefly of conine and essential oil. Chemical Composition-The most important constituent of the fruits of hemlock is Conine or Conia, C8H15N, a limpid colourless oily fluid, of sp. gr. 0.88, having poisonous properties; it has a strong alkaline reaction, and boils without decomposition at 1635 C. It was first observed by Giseke in 1827, recognized as an alkaloid by Geiger in 1831, and more amply studied by Wertheim in 1856 and 1862. In the plant, it is combined with an acid (malic?), and accompanied by ammonia as well as by a second less poisonous crystallizable base called Conhydrine, CH17NO, which may be converted into conine by abstraction of the elements of water. From these alkaloids a liquid, non-poisonous, hydrocarbon, Conylene, C8H14, has been separated by Wertheim. Even in nature one hydrogen atom of conine is frequently replaced by methyl, CH3; and commercial conine commonly contains, as shown by A. von Planta and Kekulé, methyl-conine NCH14 Lastly there is present CH3. in hemlock fruits, a third alkaloid having probably the composition C'H13N. As to the yield of conine, it varies according to the development of the fruits, but is at best only about per cent. According to Schroff (1870), the fruits are most active just before maturity, provided they are gathered from the biennial plant. At a later stage, conine is probably partly transformed into conhydrine, which however is present in but very small proportion,-about 11 per mille at most. In its deleterious action, conine resembles nicotine, but is much less powerful. Schiff (1871-1872) has artificially produced an alkaloid partaking of the general properties of conine, and having the same composition; but it is optically indifferent. Conine on the other hand, we find turns the plane of polarization from 47°7 to 61°4, that is to say 13°7 to the right, when examined in a column 25 mm. long.' The fruits of hemlock contain also a volatile oil which appears devoid of poisonous properties; it exists in but small quantity and has not yet been fully examined. Uses The fruits of hemlock are the only convenient source of the alkaloid conine. They were introduced into British medicine in 1864, as a substitute for the dried leaf in making the tincture. But it has been shown that a tincture, whether of leaf or fruit, is a preparation of very small value, and that it is far inferior to the preserved juice of the herb. It has however been pointed out by W. Manlius Smith 2 and his observations have been confirmed by Harley,' that the green unripe fruits possess more than any other part the peculiar energies of the plant, and that they may even be dried without loss of activity. A medicinal fluid extract of considerable power has been made from them by Squibb of New York. 1 The couine thus examined had been prepared by Merck, of Darmstadt, and was colourless. 2 Trans. of the New York State Medical Society for 1867. 3 The Old Vegetable Neurotics, Lond. 1869. |