History-The seeds of this plant were employed in medicine by the Arabian physicians under the name Habbun-nil; and they have probably been long in use among the natives of Hindustan. In recent times they have been recommended by O'Shaughnessy, Kirkpatrick, Bidie, Waring1 and many other European practitioners in India, as a safe and efficient cathartic.

Description-The shape of the seeds is that which would result if a nearly spherical body were divided perpendicularly around its axis into 6 or 8 almost equal segments, only that the back is less regularly vaulted. The seeds are of an inch high and nearly as much broad; 100 of them weigh on an average about 6 grammes. There is a smaller variety imported from Calcutta, of which 100 seeds weigh but little over 3 grammes; in every other respect the two sorts are identical. Both are of a dull black, excepting at the umbilicus which is brown and somewhat hairy. The adjacent parts of the thin shell (testa) crack in various directions, if the seed is kept for a short time in cold water. If it is removed from the upper part of the vaulted back, the radicle becomes visible, surrounded by the undulated folds of the cotyledons, which join perpendicularly, but cannot be easily unfolded by reason of the thin seminal integument. Cut transversely, the cotyledons show the same curled structure. Throughout their tissue, small bright glands in considerable number are observable, even without a lens. The kernel, which is devoid of albumen, has at first a nutty taste, with subsequently a disagreeable persistent acridity. When bruised in a mortar, the seeds evolve a heavy earthy smell.

Microscopic Structure-The seed is covered with a dark blackish cuticle, formed of a densely packed tissue, the cells of which show zigzag outlines. The dark brown epidermis is composed of very close cylindrical cells, about 70 mkm. in length and 5 to 7 mkm. in diameter; they require to be treated with chromic acid in order that their structure may be distinctly seen.

The tissue of the kernels is made up of thick-walled cells. Between this tissue and the shell, there is a colourless layer, about 70 mkm. thick, of thin-walled corky parenchyme. The cotyledons contain in their narrow tissue, numerous granules of albuminous matter, mucilage, a little tannic acid, crystals of oxalate of calcium, and a few starch granules. The glands or hollows, before alluded to as occurring throughout the tissue of the cotyledons, are about 70 mkm. in diameter, and contain an oily liquid.

Chemical Composition-By exhausting the seeds dried at 100° C. with boiling ether, we obtained a thick light-brownish oil having an acrid taste and concreting below 18° C. The powdered seeds yielded of this oil 144 per cent. Water removes from the seeds a considerable amount of mucilage, some albuminous matter and a little tannic acid. The first is soluble to some extent in dilute spirit of wine, and may be precipitated therefrom by an alcoholic solution of acetate of lead.

The active principle of kaladana is a resin, soluble in alcohol, but neither in benzol nor in ether. From the residue of the seeds after exhaustion by ether, treatment with absolute alcohol removed a pale yellowish resin in quantity equivalent to 8.2 per cent. of the seed.

1 Pharm. Journ. vii. (1866) 496.

Kaladana resin, which has been introduced into medical practice in India under the name of Pharbitisin,1 has a nauseous acrid taste and an unpleasant odour, especially when heated. It melts about 160° C. The following liquids dissolve it more or less freely, namely, spirit of wine, absolute alcohol, acetic acid, glacial acetic acid, acetone, acetic ether, methylic and amylic alcohol, and alkaline solutions. It is on the other hand insoluble in ether, benzol, chloroform, and sulphide of carbon. With concentrated sulphuric acid, it forms a brownish yellow solution, quickly assuming a violet hue. This reaction however requires a very small quantity of the powdered resin. If a solution of the resin in ammonia, after having been kept a short time, is acidulated, no precipitate is formed; but the solution is now capable of separating protoxide of copper from an alkaline solution of the tartrate, which originally it did not alter. Heated with nitric acid, the resin affords Mayer's

Ipomæic Acid.

From these reactions of kaladana resin, we are entitled to infer that it agrees with the resin of jalap or Convolvulin. To prepare it in quantity, it would probably be best to treat the seeds with common acetic acid, and to precipitate it by neutralizing the solution. We have ascertained that the resin is not decomposed when digested with glacial acetic acid at 100° C., even for a week.

We have had the opportunity of examing a sample of kaladana resin manufactured by Messrs. Rogers and Co., chemists of Bombay and Poona, which we found to agree with that prepared by ourselves. It is a light yellowish friable mass, resembling purified jalap resin, and like it, capable of being perfectly decolorized by treatment with animal charcoal.

Uses Kaladana seeds have cathartic powers like jalap. Besides the resin, an extract, tincture and compound powder have been introduced into the Pharmacopoeia of India. In many parts of India the natives take the roasted seeds as a purgative.

SOLANACEÆ.

STIPES DULCAMARÆ.

Caules Dulcamara; Bitter-sweet, Dulcamara, Woody Nightshade; F. Douce amère, Morelle grimpante; G. Bittersüss.

Botanical Origin-Solanum Dulcamara L., a perennial shrubby plant, having small purple flowers and red berries, occurring throughout Europe, except in the extreme north. It is also found in Northern Africa, and in Asia Minor, and has become naturalized in North America. It is common in moist, shady hedges and thickets."

History-The stalks of bitter-sweet were introduced into medical practice by the German physicians and botanists of the 16th century, one of whom, Tragus (1552), has figured and described it, under the name of Dulcis amara or Dulcamarum.

1 Pharmacopoeia of India, 1868. 156.

2 Solanum nigrum L. which slightly resembles dulcamara, is a low-growing annual

or biennial, with herbaceous stems, and berries usually black.

Description-The older stems are woody; the upper and younger are soft and green, long and straggling, attaining by the support of other plants, a height of 6 feet or more, and dying back in the winter. For medicinal use, the shoots of a year or two old should be gathered, either late in the year, or early in the spring before the leaves come out. These shoots are several feet long, by about of an inch thick, of a light greenish-brown, sometimes cylindrical, at others indistinctly 4- or 5-sided, slightly furrowed longitudinally, or somewhat warty.

The thin, shining cork-bark easily exfoliates, showing beneath it the mesophlæum which is rich in chlorophyll. The stalks are mostly hollow, and partially filled with a whitish pith. The wood when dried is about half or one-third as broad as the hollow centre, and the green bark considerably narrower than the wood; the latter has a radiate structure, and in older stems exhibits two or three sharply-defined annual rings. The stems are usually cut into short lengths before being dried for use.

The odour which is rather foetid and unpleasant, is to a great extent dissipated by drying. The taste at first slightly bitter, is afterwards. sweetish. The bitter appears to be more predominant in the spring than in the autumn.

Microscopic Structure-The epidermis of younger shoots consists of tabular thick-walled cells, many of them being elevated from the surface as short blunt hairs. The older stems are covered with the usual suberous envelope. The boundary between the mesophleum and the endophloeum is marked by a ring of strong liber fibres, some of which also occur in the pith. The woody part is rich in large vessels. In the parenchymatous tissue of bitter-sweet, small crystals of oxalate of calcium, not of a well-defined outline, and minute starch granules are deposited.

Chemical Composition-The taste of bitter-sweet appears due, according to Schoonbroodt (1867), to a bitter principle yielding by decomposition, sugar and Solanine,-the latter in very small amount. Solanine is an alkaloid; it was first prepared in 1820 by Desfosses from the berries of Solanum nigrum L, and was subsequently detected by the same chemist in the leaves and stalks of S. Dulcamara, and by Peschier in the berries. Winckler (1841) observed that the alkaloid of dulcamara stems can be obtained only in an amorphous state, and that it behaves to platinic and mercuric chlorides differently from the solanine of potatoes. Moitessier (1856) confirmed this observation, and obtained only amorphous salts of the solanine of bitter-sweet.

Zwenger and Kind on the one hand, and O. Gmelin on the other (1859 and 1858), found that solanine, C43H6NO16, is a conjugated compound of sugar and a peculiar crystallizable alkaloid, Solanidine, C25H39NO. The latter, under the influence of strong hydrochloric acid, gives up water, and is converted into the amorphous and likewise basic compound, Solanicine, C50H76N2O.

Lastly, Wittstein (1852) detected in the stems of bitter-sweet another amorphous alkaloid, Dulcamarine, which has a bitter-sweet taste, but differs in its reactions both from the solanine of potatoes and from that obtained by Winckler from dulcamara. It exists to the extent of scarcely per cent.

Uses-Dulcamara is occasionally given in the form of decoction, in

rheumatic or cutaneous affections; but its real action, according to Garrod, is unknown. This physician remarks that it does not dilate the pupil or produce dryness of the throat like belladonna, henbane or stramonium. He has given to a patient 3 pints of the decoction per diem without any marked action, and has also administered as much as half a pound of the fresh berries with no ill effect.

FRUCTUS CAPSICI.

Pod Pepper, Red Pepper, Guinea Pepper, Chillies, Capsicum; F. Piment ou Corail des Jardins, Poivre d'Inde ou de Guinée; G. Spanischer Pfeffer.

Botanical Origin-The plants, the fruits of which are known as Pod Pepper, have for a long period been cultivated in tropical countries, and are now found in such numerous varieties, that an exact determination of the original species is a point of great difficulty. Of several species having pungent fruits, the two following are those which supply the spice found in British commerce :—

1. Capsicum fastigiatum Blume, a small ramous shrub, with 4-sided, fastigiate, diverging branches; fruit-bearing peduncles sub-geminate, slender, erect; fruit very small, subcylindrical, oblong, straight, with calyx obconical and truncate. It occurs apparently wild in Southern India, and is extensively cultivated in Tropical Africa and America.

Roxburgh, who describes this plant under the name C. minimum, terms it East Indian Bird Chilly or Cayenne Pepper Capsicum. Wight says that it is consumed by the natives of India, but that it is not the sort preferred. It is this species that the authors of the British Pharmacopoeia have cited as the source of the Fructus Capsici to be used in medicine, and it certainly furnishes the greater part of the Pod Pepper now found in the London market.

2. C. annuum L., an herbaceous (sometimes shrubby?) plant, with fruit extremely variable in size, form and colour, in some varieties erect, in others pendulous. According to Naudin, in whose opinion we concur, C. longum DC3 and C. grossum Willd. are not specifically distinct from this plant. It furnishes the larger kinds of Pod Pepper and, as we believe, much of the Cayenne Pepper which is imported in the state of powder.

History-All species of Capsicum appear to be of American origin: no ancient Sanskrit or Chinese name for the genus is known, and the Latin and Greek names that have been referred to it, are extremely doubtful.4

The earliest reference to the fruit as a condiment that we have met with, occurs in a letter written in 1494 to the Chapter of Seville by Chanca, physician to the fleet of Columbus in his second voyage to the

1 Essentials of Materia Medica, 1855. 196. 2 Wight, Icones Plant. India Orient. iv. (1850) tab. 1617; Capsicum minimum Roxb. Flor. Ind. i. (1832) 574. Farre has ascertained that this is the Capsicum frutescens of the Species Plantarum of Linnæus, but not that of the Hortus Cliffortianus of the same

botanist, to which latter the name C. frutescens is usually applied.

3 The chief distinction between C. annuum and C. longum, is that the former has an erect, the latter a pendulous fruit.

412.

Dunal in De Cand. Prodromus, xiii. i.

West Indies. The writer in noticing the productions of Hispaniola, remarks that the natives live on a root called Age, which they season with a spice they term Agi, also eaten with fish and meat. The first of these words signifies yam, the second is the designation of Red Pepper, and still the common name for it in Spanish. Capsicum and its uses are more particularly described by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, who reached Tropical America from Spain in A.D. 1514.2

In the Historia Stirpium of Leonhard Fuchs, published at Basle in 1542, may be found the first and excellent figures of Capsicum longum DC. under the name of Siliquastrum or Calicut Pepper; the author states that the plant had been introduced into Germany from India a few years previously. From this might be inferred an Indian origin; but on the other hand, Clusius asserts that the plant was brought from Pernambuco by the Portuguese, whose commercial intercourse with India would easily explain it being carried thither at an early period. He further states, that the American capsicum had been generally introduced into the gardens of Castille, and that it was used all the year round, green or dried, as a condiment and as pepper. He also saw it cultivated in abundance at Brünn in Moravia in 1585.3

Capsicum longum DC. was grown in England by Gerarde (1597 et antea), who speaks of the pods as well known, and sold "in the shops at Billingsgate by the name of Ginnie Pepper."

Description-As already indicated, the Pod Pepper of commerce is of two kinds, namely:

1. Fruits of Capsicum fastigiatum-These are to of an inch in length, by about of an inch in diameter, of an elongated, subconical form, tapering to a blunt point, and slightly contracted towards the base. The calyx, which is not always present, is cup-shaped, 5-toothed, 5-sided, supported on a slender, straight pedicel, to 1 inch long. The fruits, which are somewhat compressed and shrivelled by drying, and also brittle when old, have a leathery, smooth, shining, translucent, thin, dry pericarp, of a dull orange-red, enclosing about 18 seeds, attached in two cells to a thin central partition. The seeds have the form of roundish or ovate discs, about of an inch in diameter, somewhat thickened at the edges; the embryo is curved, almost into a ring. The taste of the pericarp, and likewise of the seeds, is extremely pungent and fiery. The dried fruit has an odour by no means feeble, which we cannot compare to that of any other substance.

2. Fruits of Capsicum annuum of the commonest variety, resemble those of C. fastigiatum, except that they are of larger size, being from 2 to 3 or more inches in length, often rather more tapering towards the extremity. The seeds scarcely surpass in size those of C. fastigiatum.

Microscopic Structure-The pericarp consists of two layers, the outer being composed of yellow thick-walled cells. The inner layer is twice as broad and exhibits a soft shrunken parenchyme, traversed by thin fibro-vascular bundles. The cells of the outer layer especially are

1 Letters of Christopher Columbus, translated by Major (Hakluyt Society), 1870. 68. Oviedo, Historia de las Indias Madrid, i. (1851) 275

3 Caroli Clusii Cura posteriores, Antverp., 1611. 95.