Pee et ee | ee oe ae 
COMBRETACEM. 3 
a less degree. The best way of administering myrobalans as a 
purgative is to make an infusion or decoction of from 2 to 4 
drachms of fruit pulp with the addition of a pinch of caraway 
seeds and a little honey or sugar. 
Ainslie notices their use as an application to aphthe. In 
the Pharmacopwia of India, Dr. Waring mentions his having 
found six of the mature fruit an efficient and safe purgative, 
producing four or five copious stools, unattended by griping, 
nausea or other ill effects ; probably those used by him were 
not of the largest kind. Dr. Hové in his account of a visit to 
the Myrobalan Plantation at Bungar in the Concan in 1787, 
states that he found one fruit a sufficient purgative, though 
_ the manager of the plantation told him that two were generally 
used, Twining (Diseases of Bengal, Vol. I., p. 407,) speaks 
very favourably of the immature fruit (Halileh-i-zangi) as a 
tonic and aperient in enlargements of the abdominal viscera. 
We have found them a useful medicine in diarrhoea and dysen- 
tery, given in doses of a drachm twice a day. Recently, 
Apéry has brought to the notice of the profession 
in Europe the value of these black myrobalans in dysentery, 
-choleraic diarrhoea, and chronic diarrhoea ; he administers them 
in pills of 25 centigrams each, the dose being from 4 to 12 pills 
or even more in the 24 hours. (Journ. de Pharm. et de Chim. 
Feb. Ist, 1888.) Roxburgh states that the tender leaves, 
while scarce unfolded, are said to be punctured by an an insect, 
and its. eggs deposited therein, which by the extravasation of 
the sap, become enlarged into hollow galls of various shapes 
and sizes, but rarely exceeding an inch in diameter. They are 
powerfully astringent, and make as good ink as oak galls. 
They also yield the chintz painters on the coast of Coromandel 
their best and most durable yellow. They are called by the 
Tamils Kadu-cai-pu, and by the Telingas Aldicai, (Fl. Ind. 
Il., 435.) In the Pharmacopeia of India they are noticed on 
the authority of the Rev. J. Kearns of Tinnevelly as a valu- 
_ able astringent in diarrhea. The Himalayan tribes eat the a 
: seornels of sie L-appropeing; at — use the fruitas a os: for soré 
a = KL 
