42 * SANSKRIT MATERIA MEMCA. 



Haritdla is purified for internal use by being successively 

 boiled in kdnjika, tlie juice of the fruit of Benincasa cerifera 



( Jcushmdnda) 



myroba- 



lans, for three hours in each fluid. Some physicians, probably 



to save time, mix all these fluids together, and boil the orpiment 



in the mixture for three hours only. The dose of orpiment thus 



purified is from two to four grains. 



t 



Several methods of roasting orpiment are described. The 

 Bhavaprakasa recommends that orpiment should be powdered and 

 made into a ball with the juice of Boerhaavia diffusa (punarnava) 

 and placed in the centre of a pot full of the ashes of that plant. 

 The pot should be now covered with a dish, luted with clay, and 

 heated over a fire for twenty hours. When cool the ball of roasted 

 orpiment is taken out from the pot and reduced to powder. 

 Another process is as follows. Take of purified orpiment and 

 yavahslwra, equal parts, rub them together with the juice of Vitex 

 Negundo (nirgundi), and roast the mixture in a closed crucible. 

 The resulting compound from both these processes is described 

 as white camphor like substance. 



A specimen of roasted orpiment supplied to me by an up- 

 country physician was analized and found to contain but a small 

 proportion of white arsenic. Bengali physicians do not prepare 

 this drug from a superstitious notion that the man who roasts 

 orpiment dies very soon. They purchase it from Fakirs or 

 religious mendicants. It is said that some specimens of roasted 

 orpiment are highly poisonous, and contain a large proportion of 

 white arsenic. The quality of the drug would no doubt vary 

 according to the method in which it is prepared. 



Orpiment is said to cure fevers and skin diseases, to increase 

 strength and beauty, and to prolong life. In fever it is used in 

 combination with mercury, aconite, etc. The following is an 

 illustration. 



Government records in Mof ussil Courts being written on nrsenicised paper 

 instead of the ordinary English foolscap, which is so rapidly destroyed both 

 by the climate and also by white-ants. To guard against mistake I should 

 add here that the ordinary yellow paper sold in the bazars is dyed with 

 turmeric, and not at all proof against the attack of inserts," 



