part 6

(1876).

[1565] 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.

[1566] _Lond. Med. and Phys. Journ._ lxv. 189.

[1567] 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 mesophlœum. 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,[1568] 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 leaves, downy beneath, abounding in 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, to the oasis Dachel, and other oases of the Sahara, to Nubia, Abyssinia, the lake Tsad and through the 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,[1569] much resembling 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.[1570]

[1568] _Pharm. of India_, 457; also _Chem. Gazette_, 1843. 378.

[1569] Hence the specific name _gigantea_.

[1570] The botanical distinctions between the two species may be stated thus:—

_C. procera_, corolla cup-shaped, petals somewhat erect, flower-buds spherical, appendages of corona with a blunt upward point. See Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, _Med. Plants_,