As found in the bazaars the drug occurs as short transverse segments of a cylindrical woody stem from of an inch up to 2 inches in diameter. They exhibit a shrunken appearance, especially those derived from the younger stems, and are covered with a smooth, translucent, shrivelled bark which becomes dull and rugose with age. Many of the pieces are marked with warty prominences and the scars of adventitious roots. The outer layer which is easily detached covers a shrunken parenchyme. The transverse section of the stem shows it to be divided by about 12 to 14 meduallry rays into the same number of wedgeshaped woody bundles having very large vessels, but no concentric structure. The drug is inodorous but has a very bitter taste. The root is stated by O'Shaughnessy' to be large, soft, and spongy.

Microscopic Structure--The suberous coat consists of alternating layers of flat corky cells and sclerenchyme, sometimes of a yellow colour. The structure of the central part reminds one of that of Cissampelos Pareira (p. 28), like which it is not divided into concentric zones. The woody rays which are sometimes intersected by parenchyme, are surrounded by a loose circle of arched bundles of liber tissue.

Chemical Composition-No analysis worthy of the name has been made of this drug, and the nature of its bitter principle is wholly unknown. We have had no material at our disposal sufficient for chemical examination.

Uses-Gulancha is reputed to be tonic, antiperiodic and diuretic. According to Waring it is useful in mild forms of intermittent fever, in debility after fevers and other exhausting diseases, in secondary syphilitic affections and chronic rheumatism.

Substitute-Tinospora crispa Miers, an allied species occurring in Silhet, Pegu, Java, Sumatra, and the Phillipines, possesses similar properties, and is highly esteemed in the Indian Archipelago as a febrifuge.

BERBERIDEÆ.

CORTEX BERBERIDIS INDICUS.

Indian Barberry Bark.

Botanical Origin-This drug is allowed in the Pharmacopoeia of India to be taken indifferently from three Indian species of Berberis3 which are the following:

1. Berberis aristata DC., a variable species occurring in the temperate regions of the Himalaya at 6000 to 10,000 feet elevation, also found in the Nilghiri mountains and Ceylon.*

2. B. Lycium Royle, an erect, rigid shrub found in dry, hot situations of the western part of the Himalaya range at 3000 to 9000 feet above the sea-level.

1 Bengal Dispensatory, 1842. 198.

2 Pharm. of India, 1868. 9.

3 For remarks on the Indian species of Berberis, see Hooker and Thomson's Flora

Indica (1855), also Hooker's Flora of British
India, i. (1872) 108.

4

Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, part 25.

3. B. asiatica Roxb.-This species has a wider distribution than the last, being found in the dry valleys of Bhotan and Nepal whence it stretches westward along the Himalaya to Garwhal, and occurs again in Affghanistan.

History The medical practitioners of ancient Greece and Italy made use of a substance called Lycium (Xúktov) of which the best kind was brought from India. It was regarded as a remedy of great value in restraining inflammatory and other discharges; but of all the uses to which it was applied the most important was the treatment of various forms of ophthalmic inflammation.

Lycium is mentioned by Dioscorides, Pliny, Celsus, Galen, and Scribonius Largus; by such later Greek writers as Paulus Ægineta, Etius, and Oribasius, as well as by the Arabian physicians.

The author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea who probably lived in the 1st century, enumerates Xuktov as one of the exports of Barbarike at the mouth of the Indus, and also names it along with Bdellium and Costus among the commodities brought to Barygaza:and further, lycium is mentioned among the Indian drugs on which duty was levied at the Roman custom house of Alexandria about A.D. 176-180.1

An interesting proof of the esteem in which it was held is afforded by some singular little vases or jars of which a few specimens are preserved in collections of Greek antiquities. These vases were made to contain lycium, and in them it was probably sold; for an inscription on the vessel not only gives the name of the drug but also that of a person who, we may presume, was either the seller or the inventor of the composition. Thus we have the Lycium of Jason, of Musaus, and of Heracleus. The vases bearing the name of Jason were found at Tarentum, and there is reason to believe that that marked Heracleus was from the same locality. Whether it was so or not, we know that a certain Heraclides of Tarentum is mentioned by Celsus on account of his method of treating certain diseases of the eye; and that Galen gives formulæ for ophthalmic medicines on the authority of the same person.

3

Innumerable conjectures were put forth during at least three centuries as to the origin and nature of lycium, and especially of that highly esteemed kind that was brought from India.

In the year 1833, Royle" communicated to the Linnean Society of London a paper proving that the Indian Lycium of the ancients was identical with an extract prepared from the wood or root of several species of Berberis growing in Northern India, and that this extract, well known in the bazaars as Rusot or Rasot, was in common use among the natives in various forms of eye disease." This substance attracted

1 Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, ii. (1807) 390, 410, 734.

2 Figures of these vessels were published by Dr. J. Y. Simpson in an interesting paper entitled Notes on some ancient Greek medical vases for containing Lycium, of which we have made free use.-See (Edinb.) Monthly Journal of Med. Science, xvi. (1853) 24, also Pharm. Journ. xiii. (1854) 413.

3 Lib. vii. c. 7.-See also Cælius Aurelianus, De morbis chronicis (Haller's ed.) lib. i. c. 4, lib. iii. c. 8.

4 Cataplasmata lippientium quibus usus est Heraclides Tarentinus-Galen, De Comp. Med. sec. locos, lib. iv. (p. 153 in Venice edit. of 1625).

On the Lycium of Dioscorides.-Linn. Trans. xvii. (1837) 83.

6 It is interesting to find that two of the

considerable notice in India, and though its efficacy per se1 seemed questionable, it was administered with benefit as a tonic and febrifuge.2 But the rusot of the natives being often badly prepared or adulterated, the bark of the root has of late been used in its place, and in consequence of its acknowledged efficacy has been admitted to the Pharmacopoeia of India.

Description.-In B. asiatica (the only species we have examined) the roots which are thick and woody, and internally of a bright yellow, are covered with a thin, brittle bark. The bark has a light-brown corky layer, beneath which it appears of a darker and greenish-yellow hue, and composed of coarse fibres running longitudinally. The inner surface has a glistening appearance by reason of fine longitudinal striæ. The bark is inodorous and very bitter.

4

Chemical Composition.-Solly pointed out in 1843 that the rootbark of the Ceylon barberry [B. aristata] contains the same yellow colouring matter as the barberry of Europe. L. W. Stewart extracted Berberine in abundance from the barberry of the Nilkhiri Hills and Northern India, and presented specimens of it to one of us in 1865.

The root-bark of Berberis vulgaris L. was found by Polex (1836) to contain another alkaloid named Oxyacanthine, which forms with acids. colourless crystallizable salts of bitter taste."

Uses. The root-bark of the Indian barberries administered as a tincture has been found extremely useful in India in the treatment of fevers of all types. It has also been given with advantage in diarrhoea and dyspepsia, and as a tonic for general debility. In the collection of the Chinese customs at Paris, in 1878, the root-barks of Berberis Lycium and B. chinensis, from the province of Shen-si, were likewise exhibited (No. 1,823) as a tonic.

RHIZOMA PODOPHYLLI.

Radix podophylli; Podophyllum Root.

Botanical Origin-Podophyllum peltatum L., a perennial herb growing in moist shady situations throughout the eastern side of the North American continent from Hudson's Bay to New Orleans and Florida.

The stem about a foot high, bears a large, solitary, white flower, rising from between two leaves of the size of the hand composed of 5 to 7 wedge-shaped divisions, somewhat lobed and toothed at the apex. The yellowish pulpy fruit of the size of a pigeon's egg is slightly acid and is sometimes eaten under the name of May Apple. The leaves partake of the active properties of the root.

History The virtues of the rhizome as an anthelminthic and emetic

names for lycium given by Ibn Baytar in the 13th century are precisely those under which rusot is met with in the Indian bazaars at the present day.

1The natives apply it in combination with alum and opium.

2 O'Shaughnessy, Bengal Dispensatory (1842) 203-205.

3 Journ. of R. Asiat. Soc. vii. (1843) 74. Pharm. Journ. vii. (1866) 303.

4

5 Gmelin, Chemistry, xvii. (1866) 197.

have been long known to the Indians of North America. The plant was figured in 1731 by Catesby' who remarks that its root is an excellent emetic. Its cathartic properties were noticed by Schöpf* and Barton and have been commented upon by many subsequent writers. In 1820, podophyllum was introduced into the United States Pharmacopoeia, and in 1864 into the British Pharmacopoeia. Hodgson published in 1832 in the Journal of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy the first attempt of a chemical examination of the rhizome, which now furnishes one of the most popular purgatives, the so-called Podophyllin, manufactured on a large scale at Cincinnati and in other places in America, as well as in England.

Description-The drug consists of the rhizome and rootlets. The former creeps to a length of several feet, but as imported is mostly in somewhat flattened pieces of 1 to 8 inches in length and 2 to 4 lines in longest diameter: it is marked by knotty joints showing a depressed scar at intervals of a few inches which marks the place of a fallen stem. Each joint is in fact the growth of one year, the terminal bud being enclosed in papery brownish sheaths. Sometimes the knots produce one, two, or even three lateral buds and the rhozime is bi- or tri-furcate. The reddish-brown or grey surface is obscurely marked at intervals by oblique wrinkles indicating the former attachment of rudimentary leaves. The rootlets are about a line thick and arise from below the knots and adjacent parts of the rhizome, the internodal space being bare. They They are brittle, easily detached, and commonly of a paler colour. The rhizome is mostly smooth, but some of the branched pieces are deeply furrowed. Both rootstock and rootlets have a short, smooth, mealy fracture; the transverse section is white, exhibiting only an extremely small corky layer and a thin simple circle of about 20 to 40 yellow, vascular bundles, enclosing a central pith which in the larger pieces is often 2 lines in diameter.

The drug has a heavy narcotic, disagreeable odour, and a bitter, acrid, nauseous taste.

Microscopic Structure-The vascular bundles are composed of spiral and scalariform vessels intermixed with cambial tissue. From each bundle a narrow-tissued, wedge- or crescent-shaped liber-bundle projects a little into the cortical layer. This, as well as the pith, exhibits large thin-walled cells. The rootlets are as usual of a different structure, their central part consisting of one group of vascular bundles more or less scattered. The parenchymatous cells of the drug are loaded with starch granules; some also contain stellate tufts of oxalate of calcium.

Chemical Composition-The active principles of podophyllum exist in the resin, which according to Squibb is best prepared by the process termed re-percolation. The powdered drug is exhausted by alcohol which is made to percolate through successive portions. The

1 Nat. Hist. of Carolina, i. tab. 24. 2 Materia Med. Americ. Erlangæ, 1787, p. 86. Schöpf was physician to German troops fighting in the War of Independence. 3 Collections for an Essay on Mat. Med. of U.S. Philad. 1798, 31.

4 Vol. iii. 273.

5 Figured by Power, Proc. American Phar. Assoc., 1877. 420-433.

6 American Journ. of Pharm. xvi. (1868) 1--10.

strong tincture thus obtained is slowly poured into a large quantity of water acidulated with hydrochloric acid (one measure of acid to 70 of water), and the precipitated resin dried at a temperature not exceeding 32° C. The acid is used to facilitate the subsidence of the pulverulent resin which according to Maisch settles down but very slowly if precipitated by cold water simply, and if thrown down by hot water fuses into a dark brown cake. The resin re-dissolved in alcohol and again precipitated by acidulated water, after thorough washing with distilled water and finally drying over sulphuric acid, amounts to about 2 per cent.

Resin of podophyllum is a light, brownish-yellow powder with a tinge of green, devoid of crystalline appearance, becoming darker if exposed to a heat above 32° C., and having an acrid, bitter taste; it is very incorrectly called Podophyllin. The product is the same whether the rhizome or the rootlets are exclusively employed.1 It is soluble in caustic, less freely in carbonated alkalis, even in ammonia, and is precipitated, apparently without alteration, on addition of an acid. Ether separates it into two nearly equal portions, the one soluble in the menstruum, the other not, but both energetically purgative. From the statements of Credner" it appears that if caustic lye is shaken with the ethereal solution, about half the resin combines with the potash, while the other half remains dissolved in the ether. If an acid is added to the potassic solution a red-brown precipitate is produced which is no longer soluble in ether nor possessed of purgative power. According to Credner, the body of greatest purgative activity was precipitated by ether from an alcoholic solution of crude podophyllin.

By

By exhausting the resin with boiling water, Power found that finally not more than 20 per cent. of the resin remained undissolved. melting the crude resin with caustic soda, a little protocatechuic acid was obtained.

F. F. Mayer of New York stated podophyllum to contain, beside the resin already mentioned, a large proportion of Berberine, a colourless alkaloid, an odoriferous principle which might be obtained by sublimation in colourless scales, and finally Saponin. From all these bodies the resin as prepared by Power, was ascertained by him to be destitute; he especially proved the absence of berberine in Podophyllum.

Uses Podophyllum is only employed for the preparation of the resin (Resina Podophylli) which is now much prescribed as a purgative.

1 Saunders in Am. Journ. of Pharm. xvi. 75.

2 Ueber Podophyllin (Dissertation), Giessen, 1869.

97.

3 Am. Journ. of Pharmacy, xxxv. (1863) L. cit., also Am. Journ. of Pharm. (1878)

370.