ais ORG. XXV. Lomentacee, CASSIA SENNA, 
plants in a hot bed all the summer, he frequently had them in 
flower, but adds, it is very rarely that they perfeet their seeds in 
England.* There can be little doubt however but that some of 
the British possessions may be found well enough adapted to the 
erowth of this vegetable, and that the patriotic- views of the 
Society for encouraging Arts, &c. which has offered a reward to 
those who succeed in the attempt, will be ultimately accomplished. 
The leaves of Senna, which are imported here for medicinal use, 
have a rather disagreeable smell, and a subacrid bitterish nauseous 
taste: they give out their virtue both to watery and spirituous 
menstrua, communicating to water and proof spirit a brownish 
colour, more or less deep according to the proportions; to rectified 
spirit a fine green." 
Senna, which is im common use as a purgative, was first known 
to the Arabian physicians, Serapion and Mesue; and the first of 
the Greeks by whom it is noticed is Actuarius, who does not 
mention the leaves, but speaks of the fruit. Mesue likewise seems 
to prefer the pod to the leaves, as being a more efficacious 
cathartic ;' but the fact is contrary, for it purges less powerfully 
than the leaf, though it has the advantage of seldom griping the 
bowels, and of being without that nauseous bitterness which the 
leaves are known to possess.* How bitterness aids the operation 
of Senna is not easily to be understood; but it is observed by Dr. 
Cullen, that “when Senna was infused in the infusum amarum, 
a less quantity of the Senna was necessary for the dose than the 
simple infusions of it.’* The same author has remarked, “ that 
& See Dict. 8 “Lewis, M. M. 
 Folliculo quam foliis est efficacior, prasertim si is ex viridi nigricat, modice 
amarus, subadstringit absolutus, recens, in quo semen amplum, compressum ; 
vetustate enim exanimatur. Mesue D. Simp. l. 2. c. 15. p. 65. 
* It has been an opinion generally received, that the footstalks of the leaves 
and twigs occasioned severe griping; but this Bergius denies, as in a number of 
instances he found their effects uniformly similar to those of the leaves. L. c. 
& M. M. Ds ite p- §21, 
ee 
