the seeds. Hence, the seeds themselves, or an emulsion prepared with them, act much more strongly than a corresponding quantity of oil. Castor oil, extracted by absolute alcohol or by bisulphide of carbon, likewise purges much more vehemently than the pressed oil.

The castor oil of commerce has a sp. gr. of about 0.96, usually a pale yellow tint, a viscid consistence, and a very slight yet rather mawkish odour and taste. Exposed to cold, it does not in general. entirely solidify until the temperature reaches -18° C. In thin layers it dries up to varnish-like film.

Castor oil is distinguished by its power of mixing in all proportions with glacial acetic acid or absolute alcohol. It is even soluble in four parts of spirit of wine (838) at 15° C., and mixes without turbidity with an equal weight of the same solvent at 25° C. The commercial varieties of the oil however, differ considerably in these as well as in some other respects.

The optical properties of the oil demand further investigation, as we have found that some samples deviate the ray of polarized light to the right and others to the left.

By saponification, castor oil yields several fatty acids, one of which appears to be Palmitic Acid. Another acid (peculiar to the oil), is Ricinoleic Acid, C18H3403; it is solid below 0° C. does not solidify in contact with the air by absorption of oxygen, and is not homologous with oleic or linoleic acid, neither of which is found in castor oil.1 Castor oil is nevertheless thickened if 6 parts of it are warmed with 1 part of starch and 5 of nitric acid (sp. gr. 1-25), Ricinelaïdin being thus formed. From this, Ricinelaïdic Acid may easily be obtained in brilliant crystals.

As to the albuminoid matter of the seed, Fleury (1865) obtained 3.23 per cent. of nitrogen which would answer to about 20 per cent. of such substances. The same chemist further extracted 46.6 per cent. of fixed oil, 2.2 of sugar and mucilage, besides 18 per cent. of cellulose.

According to Bower, the seeds contain a protein substance and a body resembling amygdalin, by the mutual reaction of which in the presence of water, there is produced in very small quantity, a fœtid poisonous substance which strongly attacks the digestive organs. These statements require investigation.

Tuson in 1864, by exhausting castor oil seeds with boiling water, obtained from them an alkaloid which he named Ricinine. He states that it crystallizes in rectangular prisms and tables, which when heated fuse, and upon cooling solidify as a crystalline mass; the crystals may even be sublimed. Burnt on platinum foil, they leave no residue. Ricinine dissolves readily in water or alcohol, less freely in ether or benzol. Concentrated sulphuric acid dissolves it without coloration. With mercuric chloride, it combines to form tufts of silky crystals, soluble in water or alcohol. Heated with potash, it evolves ammonia. Ricinine is said to have but little taste, and not to be the purgative principle of the seeds. Werner (1869) on repeating Tuson's process on 30 Hb. of Italian castor oil seeds, also obtained a crop of crystals, which in appearance and solubility had many of the characters ascribed to ricinine, but differed in the essential point that when incinerated they

1 Gmelin, Chemistry, xvii. (1866) 131-144.

2 Am. Journ. of Pharm. xxvi. (1854) 207. L L

1

left a residuum of magnesia. When heated with potash, they gave off no ammonia; Werner regarded them as the magnesium salt of a new acid. Tuson repudiates the suspicion that ricinine may be identical with Werner's magnesium compound. E. S. Wayne of Cincinnati has recently (1874) found in the leaves of Ricinus, a substance apparently identical with Tuson's ricinine; but he considers that it has no claim to be called an alkaloid.

The testa of castor oil seeds afforded us 107 per cent. of ash, one tenth of which we found to consist of silica. The ash of the kernel previously dried at 100° C., amounts to only 3.5 per cent.

Production and Commerce- Castor oil is most extensively produced in India, where two varieties of the seeds, the large and the small, are distinguished, the latter being considered to yield the better product. In manufacturing the oil, the seeds are gently crushed between rollers, and freed by hand from husks and unsound grains. At Calcutta, 100 parts of seed yield on an average 70 parts of cleaned kernels, which by the hydraulic press afford 46 to 51 per cent. of their weight of oil; the oil is afterwards subjected to a very imperfect process of purification by heating it with water.2

The exports of castor oil from Calcutta in the year 1870-71, amounted to 654,917 gallons, of which 214,959 gallons were shipped to the United Kingdom. The total imports of castor oil into the United Kingdom in the year 1870, were returned as 36,986 cwt. (about 416,000 gallons), valued at £82,490. Of this quantity, British India (chiefly Bengal) furnished about two-thirds; and Italy 11,856 cwt. (about 133,000 gallons), while a small remainder is entered as from "other parts."

Italian Castor Oil, which has of late risen into some celebrity, is pressed from the seed of plants grown chiefly about Verona and Legnago, in the north of Italy. The manufactory of Mr. Bellino Valeri at the latter town produced in the year 1873, 1200 quintals of castor oil, entirely from Italian seed. Two varieties of Ricinus are cultivated in these localities, the black-seeded Egyptian and the red-seeded American; the latter yields the larger percentage, but the oil is not so pale in colour. The seeds are very carefully deprived of their integuments, and having been crushed, are submitted to pressure in powerful hydraulic presses, placed in a room which in winter is heated to about 21° C. The outflow of oil is further promoted by plates of iron warmed to 32-38° C., being placed between the press-bags. The peeled seeds yield about 40 per cent, of oil.5

All the castor oil pressed in Italy is not pressed from Italian seed. By an official return it appears that in the years 1872-73, there were exported from Bombay to Genoa 1350 cwt. of castor oil seeds, besides 2452 gallons of castor oil. There are no data to show what was exported from the other presidencies of India in that year.

Uses-Castor oil is much valued as a mild and safe purgative; while

1 Chemical News, xxii. (1870) 229.

2 Madras Exhibition of Raw Products, etc. of Southern India,-Reports by the Juries, Madras, 1856. 28.

3 Annual Volume of Trade and Navigation for the Bengal Presidency for 1870-71, Calcutta, 1871. 119.

4 Annual Statement of the Trade, &c. of the U.K. for 1870.-No later returns.

5 H. Groves, Pharm. Journ. viii. (1867) 250.

6 Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the Presidency of Bombay for 1872-73, part ii. 87. 88.

the commoner qualities are used in soap-making, and in India for burning in lamps. The seeds are not now administered. The leaves of the plant applied in decoction to the breasts of women, are said to promote or even to occasion the secretion of milk. This property which has long been known to the inhabitants of the Cape Verd Islands1 was particularly observed by Dr. McWilliam about the year 1850. It has even been found that the galactagogue powers of the plant are exerted when the leaves are administered internally.

KAMALA.

Kamela, Glandulæ Rottlera.

Botanical Origin-Mallotus Philippinensis Müll. Arg. (Croton Philippense Lam., Rottlera tinctoria Roxb., Echinus Philippinensis Baillon), a large shrub, or small tree, attaining 20 or 30 feet in height, of very wide distribution. It grows in Abyssinia and Southern Arabia, throughout the Indian peninsulas, ascending the mountains to 5000 feet above the sea-level, in Ceylon, the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, Eastern China and in North Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.

The tricoccous fruits of many of the Euphorbiacea are clothed with prickles, stellate hairs, or easily removed glands. This is especially the case in the several species of Mallotus, most of which have the capsules covered with stellate hairs, together with small glands. In that under notice, the capsule is closely beset with ruby-like glands which, when removed by brushing and rubbing, constitute the powder known by the Bengali name of Kamala. These glands are not confined to the capsule, but are scattered over other parts of the plant, especially among the dense tomentum with which the under side of the leaf is covered.

History This drug is mentioned by some of the Arabian physicians 2 as early as the 10th century, under the name of Kanbil or Wars. Ibn Khurdadbah, an Arab geographer, living A.D. 869-885, states that from Yemen come striped silks, ambergris, wars, and gum.3 It is described to be a reddish yellow powder like sand, which falls on the ground in the valleys of Yemen, and is a good remedy for tapeworm and cutaneous diseases. One writer compares it to powdered saffron; another speaks of two kinds,-an Abyssinian which is black (or violet), and an Indian which is red. Abul-Abbas el-Nebáti, who was a native of Spain, remarks that the drug is known in the Hejaz and brought from Yemen, but that it is unknown in Andalusia and does not grow there.

In modern times, we find Niebuhr speaks of the same substance (as "uars") stating it to be a dye-stuff, of which quantities are conveyed from Mokha to Oman. The drug must have been long known in India, for it has several Sanskrit names: one of these is Kapila, which as well as the Telugu Kápila-podi, is sometimes used by Europeans, though not

so frequently as the word Kamala or Kamela, which belongs to the Hindustani, Bengali and Guzratti languages.

It does not appear that as a drug the glandular powder of Mallotus, or as it is more conveniently called, Kamala, attracted any particular notice in Europe until a very recent period, though it is named by Ainslie, Roxburgh, Royle and Buchanan, the last of whom gives an interesting account of its collection and uses.1 In 1852, specimens of it as found in the bazaar of Aden under the old Arabic name of Wars, were sent to one of us by Port-Surgeon Vaughan, with information as to its properties as a dye for a silk and as a remedy in cutaneous diseases.2 But the real introduction of the drug as a useful medicine is due to Mackinnon, surgeon in the Bengal Medical Establishment, who administered it successfully in numerous cases of tapeworm. Anderson of Calcutta, C. A. Gordon, and Corbyn in India, and Leared in London, confirmed the observations of Mackinnon, and fully established the fact that kamala is an efficient tænifuge. It was introduced into the British Pharmacopoeia in 1864.

Production-Kamala is one of the minor products of the Government forests in the Madras Presidency, but is also collected in many other parts of India. The following particulars have been communicated to us by a correspondent in the North-west Provinces:

Enormous quantities of Rottlera tinctoria are found growing at the foot of these hills, and every season numbers of people, chiefly women and children, are engaged in collecting the powder for exportation to the plains. They gather the berries in large quantities and throw them into a great basket in which they roll them about, rubbing them with their hands so as to divest them of the powder, which falls through the basket as through a sieve, and is received below on a cloth spread for the purpose. This powder forms the Kamala of commerce, and is in great repute as an anthelmintic, but is most extensively used as a dye. The adulterations are chiefly the powdered leaves, and the fruit-stalks with a little earthy matter, but the percentage is not large. The operations of picking the fruit and rubbing off the powder commence here in the beginning of March and last about a month.

The powder is collected in a similar manner in Southern Arabia, whence it is shipped to the Persian Gulf and Bombay. It is also brought under the name of Wars, from Hurrur, a town in Eastern Africa, which is a great trading station between the Galla countries and Berbera.5

Description-Kamala is a fine, granular, mobile powder, consisting of transparent, crimson granules, the bright colour of which is mostly somewhat deadened by the admixture of grey stellate hairs, minute fragments of leaves and similar foreign matter. It is nearly destitute of taste and smell, but an alcoholic solution poured into water emits a melon-like odour. Kamala is scarcely acted on by water, even at a boiling heat; on the other hand, alcohol, ether, chloroform or benzol extract from it a splendid red resin. Neither sulphuric nor nitric acid

1 Journey through Mysore, Canara, etc.,

Lond. 1807, i. 168. 211, ii. 343.

2 Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 386. 589. 3 Ibid. xvii. (1858) 408.

4 F. E. G. Matthews, Esq., of Nainee "›l. 5 Burton, Journ. of R. Geogr. Soc Y, XXV. (1855) 146.

acts upon it in the cold, nor does oil of turpentine become coloured by it unless warmed. It floats on water, but sinks in oil of turpentine. When sprinkled over a flame, it ignites after the manner of lycopodium. Heated alone, it emits a slight aromatic odour; if pure, it leaves after incineration, about 1:37 per cent. of a grey ash.

Microscopic Structure-The granules of kamala are irregular spherical glands, 50 to 60 mkm. in diameter; they have a wavy surface, are somewhat flattened or depressed on one side, and enclose within their delicate yellowish membrane, a structureless yellow mass in which are imbedded numerous, simple, club-shaped cells containing a homogeneous, transparent, red substance. These cells are grouped in a radiate manner around the centre of the flattened side, so that on the side next the observer, 10 to 30 of them may easily be counted, while the entire gland may contain 40 to 60. In a few cases, a very short stalk-cell is also seen at the centre of the base.

When the glands are exhausted by alcohol and potash, and broken by pressure between flat pieces of glass, they separate into individual cells which swell up slightly, while the membranous envelope is completely detached, and appears as a simple coherent film. After this treatment the cells, but not their membranous envelope, acquire by prolonged contact with strong sulphuric acid and iodine water, a more or less brown or blue colour: the walls of the cells alone correspond therefore to cellulose. Vogl (1864) supposes that a cell of the epidermis of the fruit first developes a young cellule, which by partition is resolved into the stalk-cell and the true mother-cell of the small clavate resincellules. At first, the contents of the latter do not differ from the mass in which they are imbedded, and perhaps pass gradually into resin by metamorphosis of the cellular substance.

The glands of kamala are always accompanied by colourless or brownish, thick-walled, stellate hairs, two or three times as long as the glands, often containing air, which do not exhibit any peculiarity of form but resemble the hairs of other plants, as Verbascum or Althaa.

Chemical Composition-Kamala has been analysed by Anderson of Glasgow (1855) and by Leube (1860). From the labours of these chemists, it appears that the powder yields to 'alcohol or ether nearly 80 per cent. of resin. We find it to be soluble also in glacial acetic acid or in bisulphide of carbon, not in petroleum ether. By treatment of the resin extracted by ether with cold alcohol, Leube resolved it into two brittle reddish yellow resins, of which the one termed resin a. is more easily soluble and fuses at 80° C., and the other called resin B. dissolves less readily and fuses at 191° C. Both dissolve in alkaline solutions and can be precipitated by acids without apparent change. Leube assigns to Resin a. the composition C30H9O8, and to Resin B. C6H6O10.

Anderson found that a concentrated ethereal solution of kamala allowed to stand for a few days, solidified into a mass of granular crystals, which by repeated solution and crystallization in ether, were obtained in a state of purity. This substance, named by Anderson Rottlerin, forms minute, platy, yellow crystals of a fine satiny lustre, readily soluble in ether, sparingly in cold alcohol, more so in hot, and insoluble in water. The mean of four analyses gave the composition of rottlerin as C2H5O6.