APOCYNEÆ.

CORTEX ALSTONIÆ.

Cortex Alstonia scholaris; Alstonia Bark.

Botanical Origin-Alstonia1 scholaris R. Brown (Echites scholaris L.), a handsome forest tree, 50 feet or more in height, common throughout the Indian Peninsula from the sub-Himalayan region to Ceylon and Burma; found also in the Philippines, Java, Timor and Eastern Australia, likewise in Tropical Africa. It has oblong obovate leaves, in whorls of 5 to 7, and slender pendulous pods a foot or more in length.

History-Rheede 2 in 1678 and Rumphius in 1741 described and figured the tree, and mentioned the use made of its bark by the native practitioners. Rumphius also explained the trivial name scholaris as referring to slabs of the close-grained wood which are used as schoolslates, the letters being traced upon them in sand. The tonic properties of the bark were favourably spoken of by Graham in his Catalogue of Bombay Plants (1839), and further recommended by Dr. Alexander Gibson in 1853.4 The drug has a place in the Pharmacopoeia of India, 1868.

Description-The drug, as presented to one of us by the late Dr. Gibson and by Mr. Broughton of Ootacamund, consists of irregular fragments of bark, to an inch thick, of a spongy texture, easily breaking with a short, coarse fracture. The external surface is very uneven and rough, dark grey or brownish, sometimes with blackish spots; the interior substance and inner surface (liber) is of a bright buff. A transverse section shows the liber to be finely marked by numerous small medullary rays. The bark is almost inodorous; its taste is purely bitter and neither aromatic nor acrid.

Microscopic Structure-The cortical tissue is covered with a thin suberous coat; the middle layer of the bark is built up of a thin-walled parenchyme, through which enormous, hard, thick-walled cells are scattered in great numbers and are visible to the naked eye, as they form large irregular groups of a bright yellow colour. Towards the inner part, these stone-cells disappear, the tissue being traversed by undulated medullary rays, loaded with very small starch grains; many of the other parenchymatous cells of the liber contain crystals of calcium oxalate. The longitudinal section of the liber exhibits large but not very numerous laticiferous vessels, as elongated simple cells with perforated transverse walls (sieve-cells), containing a brownish mass, the concrete milk-juice in which all parts of the tree abound.

Chemical Composition-Gruppe,5 a pharmacien of Manila, has obtained from the bark an uncrystallizable bitter substance which he calls. Ditain and to which he ascribes the febrifuge powers of the drug.

From the chemical examination of the bark of an allied Australian tree, Alstonia constricta F. v. Müller, it may be presumed that the bitter 4 Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 422.

1 So named in honour of Charles Alston, Professor of Botany and Materia Medica (1740-1760) in the University of Edinburgh. 2 Hortus Malabaricus, i. tab. 45. 3 Herb. Amboin. ii. tab. 82.

5 Zeitschrift d. Oesterreich. Apoth.-Vereines 1873. 249.

6 From Dita, the name of the tree in the island of Luzon.

substance of A. scholaris is not an alkaloid. The Australian bark analysed by Palm in Wittstein's laboratory, yielded an amorphous resinous bitter body, soluble in alcohol but very sparingly in ether or water, an essential oil of camphoraceous odour, and tannic matter striking a green hue with salts of iron. Palm ascertained that the bitter principle is not of a basic nature. The Australian bark, a specimen of which has been presented to us by Dr. Wittstein, is quite different from that of A. scholaris in its structural characters.

Uses The bark has been recommended as a tonic and antiperiodic; but has not yet been employed in Europe.2

ASCLEPIADEÆ.

RADIX HEMIDESMI.

Hemidesmus Root, Nunnari Root, Indian Sarsaparilla.

Botanical Origin-Hemidesmus indicus R. Brown (Periploca indica Willd., Asclepias Pseudo-sarsa Roxb.), a twining shrub, growing throughout the Indian Peninsula and in Ceylon. The leaves are very diverse, being narrow and lanceolate in the lower part of the plant and broadly ovate in the upper branches.

History-The root under the name of Nannárí or Ananto-múl has long been employed in medicine in the southern parts of India. Ashburner in 1831, was the first to call the attention of the profession in Europe to its medicinal value. In 1864 it was admitted to a place in the British Pharmacopoeia, but its efficiency is by no means generally acknowledged.

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Description -The root is in pieces of 6 inches or more in length; it is cylindrical, tortuous, longitudinally furrowed, from to of an inch in thickness, mostly simple or provided with a few thin rootlets, emitting slender, branching, woody aerial stems, of an inch or less thick. Externally it is dark brown, sometimes with a slight violet-grey hue, which is particularly obvious in the sunshine. The transverse section of the hard root, shows a white mealy or brownish or somewhat violet cortical layer, not exceeding of an inch in thickness, and a yellowish woody column, separated by a narrow dark undulated cambial line. Neither the wood nor the cortical tissue present a radiate structure in the stout pieces; in the thinner roots, medullary rays are obvious in the woody part. The extremely thin corky layer easily separates from the bark, which latter is frequently marked transversely by large cracks. The root whether fresh or dried, has an agreeable odour resembling tonka bean or melilot. The dried root has a sweetish taste with very slight acridity. The stems are almost tasteless and inodorous. The root found in the English market is often of very bad quality.

1 Vierteljahresschrift für prakt. Pharm. xii. (1863) 161.

2 It has been recently extravagantly praised in Manila as a substitute for quinine. 3 There is an Indian root figured as Palo de Culebra by Acosta (Tractado de las Drogas

de las Indias Orientales, 1578, cap. lv.) which is astonishingly like the drug in question. He describes it moreover, as

having a sweet smell of melilot. The plant he says is called in Canarese Duda sali. The figure is reproduced in Antoine Colin's translation, but not in that of Clusius.

Lond. Med. and Phys. Journ. lxv. 189. 5 Taken from excellent specimens obligingly sent to us from India by Dr. L. W. Stewart and Mr. Broughton.

Microscopic Structure-All the proper cortical tissue shows a uniform parenchyme, not distinctly separated into liber, medullary rays and mesophlæum. On making a longitudinal section however, one can observe some elongated laticiferous vessels filled with the colourless concrete milky juice. In a transverse section, they are seen to be irregularly scattered through the bark, chiefly in its inner layers, yet even here in not very considerable number. They are frequently 30 mkm. in diameter and not branched.

The wood is traversed by small medullary rays, which are obvious only in the longitudinal section. The parenchymatous tissue of the root is loaded with large, ovoid starch granules. Tannic matters do not occur to any considerable amount, except in the outermost suberous layer.

Chemical Composition-The root has not been submitted to any adequate chemical examination. Its taste and smell appear not to depend on the presence of essential oil, so far as may be inferred from microscopic examination; and it is probable the aroma is due to a body of the cumarin class. According to Scott, the root yields by simple distillation with water, a stearoptene, which is probably the substance obtained by Garden in 1837, and supposed to be a volatile acid.

Uses The drug is reputed to be alterative, tonic, diuretic and diaphoretic, but is rarely employed, at least in England.

CORTEX MUDAR.

Cortex Calotropidis; Mudar; F. Ecorce de racine de Mudar.

Botanical Origin-The drug under notice is furnished by two nearly allied species of Calotropis, occupying somewhat distinct geographical areas, but not distinguished from each other in the native languages of India. These plants are:

1. Calotropis procera R. Brown (C. Hamiltonii Wight), a large shrub, 6 or more feet high, with dark green, oval, opposite leaves, downy beneath, abounding in an acrid milky juice.

It is a native of the drier parts of India, as the Deccan, the Upper Provinces of Bengal, the Punjab and Sind, but is quite unknown in the southern provinces; it also extends to Persia, Palestine, the Sinaitic Peninsula, Arabia, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, the oases of the Sahara, and Sudan. Lastly it has been naturalized in the West Indies.

2. C. gigantea R. Brown (Asclepias gigantea Willd.), a large erect shrub, 6 to 10 feet high, with stem as thick as a man's leg, much resembling the preceding, indigenous to Lower Bengal and the southern parts of India, Ceylon, the Malayan Peninsula, and the Moluccas.

Both species are extremely common in waste ground over their respective areas.3

History-Mudar is frequently mentioned in the writings of Susruta,

1 Pharm. of India, 457; also Chem. Gazette, 1843. 378.

Hence the specific name gigantea.

3 The botanical distinctions between the two species may be stated thus:

C. procera, corolla cup-shaped, petals

somewhat erect, flowerbuds spherical, appendages of corona with a blunt upward point. C. gigantea, corolla opening flat, flowerbuds bluntly conical or oblong, appendages of corona rounded.

and must therefore have been in use in India prior to the Christian era; and it was well known to the Arabian physicians.1

C. procera was observed in Egypt by Prosper Alpinus (1580-84), and upon his return to Italy was figured, and some account given of its medicinal properties.2

C. gigantea was figured by Rheede in 1679, and in our own day by Wight.

The medicinal virtues of mudar, though so long esteemed by the natives of India, were not investigated experimentally by Europeans until the present century, when Playfair recommended the drug in elephantiasis, and its good effects were afterwards noticed by Vos (1826), Cumin (1827), and Duncan (1829). The last-named physician also performed a chemical examination of the root-bark, the activity of which he referred to an extractive matter which he termed Mudarine.5

Description-The root-bark of C. procera, as we have received it, consists of short, arched, bent, or nearly flat fragments, to of an inch thick. They have outwardly a thickish, yellowish-grey, spongy cork, more or less fissured lengthwise, frequently separating from the middle cortical layer; the latter consists of a white mealy tissue, traversed by narrow brown liber-rays. The bark is brittle and easily powdered; it has a mucilaginous, bitter, acrid taste, but no distinctive odour. The light-yellow, fibrous wood is still attached to many of the pieces.

The roots of C. gigantea are clothed with a bark which seems to be undistinguishable from that of C. procera just described. The wood of the root consists of a porous, pale-yellow tissue, exhibiting large vascular bundles, and very numerous small medullary rays, consisting of 1 to 3 rows of the usual cells.7

Microscopic Structure-In the root-bark of C. procera, the suberous coat is made up of large, thin-walled, polyhedral, or almost cubic cells; the middle cortical layer, of a uniform parenchyme, loaded with large starch granules, or here and there containing some thick-walled cells (sclerenchyme) and tufts of oxalate of calcium. The large medullary rays are built up of the usual cells, having porous walls and containing starch and oxalate. In a longitudinal section, the tissue chiefly of the middle cortical layer, is found to be traversed by numerous laticiferous vessels, containing the dry milk juice as a brownish granular substance not soluble in potash.

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The microscopic characters of the root-bark of C. gigantea agree with those here detailed of C. procera. The stems of Calotropis are distinguished by strong liber fibres, which are not met with in the roots.

Chemical Composition-By following the process of Duncan above

7 Roots of C. gigantea kindly supplied to us by Dr. Bidie of Madras consist of light, woody truncheons, 4 to 24 inches in diameter.

It is evidently with a view to the retention of this juice, that the Pharmacopoeia of India orders the bark to be stripped from the roots when the latter are half-dried. Moodeen Sheriff remarks of C. gigantea, that although it is frequently used in medicine, no part of it is sold in the bazaars,-no doubt from the circumstance that the plant is everywhere found wild and can be collected as required.

alluded to, 200 grammes of the powdered bark of C. gigantea yielded us nothing like his Mudarine, but 24 grammes of an acrid resin, soluble in ether as well as in alcohol. The latter solution reddens litmus; the former on evaporation yields the resin as an almost colourless mass. If the aqueous liquid is separated from the crude resin, and much absolute alcohol added, an abundant precipitate of mucilage is obtained. The liquid now contains a bitter principle, which after due concentration may be separated by means of tannic acid.

We obtained similar results by exhausting the bark of C. procera with dilute alcohol. The tannic compound of the bitter principle was mixed with carbonate of lead, dried and boiled with spirit of wine. This after evaporation furnished an amorphous, very bitter mass, not soluble in water, but readily so in absolute alcohol. The solution is not precipitated by an alcoholic solution of acetate of lead. By purifying the bitter principle with chloroform or ether, it is at last obtained colourless. This bitter matter is probably the active principle of Calotropis; we ascertained by means of the usual tests, that no alkaloid occurs in the drug. The large juicy stem, especially that of C. gigantea, ought to be submitted to an accurate chemical and therapeutical examination.1

Uses-Mudar is an alterative tonic, and diaphoretic,-in large doses emetic. By the natives of India who employ it in venereal and skin complaints, almost all parts of the plant are used. According to Moodeen Sheriff, the bark of the root and the dried milky juice are the most efficient; the latter is however somewhat irregular and unsafe in its action. The same writer remarks that he has found that the older the plant, the more active is the bark in its effects. He recommends that the corky outer coat which is tasteless and inert, should be scraped off before the bark is powdered for use of a powder so prepared, 40 to 50 grains suffice as an emetic.

The stems of C. gigantea afford a very valuable fibre which can be spun into the finest thread for sewing or weaving.3

FOLIA TYLOPHORE.

Country or Indian Ipecacuanha.

Botanical Origin―Tylophora asthmatica Wight et Arnott (Asclepias asthmatica Roxb.), a twining perennial plant, common in sandy soils throughout the Indian Peninsula and naturalized in Mauritius. It may be distinguished from some of its congeners by its reddish or dull pink flowers, with the scale of the staminal corona abruptly contracted into a long sharp tooth.

History-The employment of this plant in medicine is well known to the Hindus, who call it Antamúl and use it with considerable success in dysentery. During the last century, it attracted the attention of Roxburgh who made many observations on the administration of the

1 List's Asclepione (Gmelin's Chemistry, xvii. 368) might then be sought for.

2 Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India, Madras, 1869. 364; for further information

on the therapeutic uses of mudar, see also Pharm. of India, 458.

3 Drury, Useful Plants of India, 2nd ed. 1873. 101.

4 Flora Indica, ed. Carey, ii. (1832) 33.