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LOGANIACE#; 461 
held in high- estimation. as a tonic, antiperiodic and: alexi- 
‘pharmic in Southern India under the name of Nagamushidi. 
‘On the whole we are of opinion that the Arabs were acquainted 
with nux-vomica seeds under the name of azérdéki,. but. that 
they imagined them to be of marine origin,—a comparatively: 
- modern Arabico-Persian name for them is Fulés-mahi (‘fish 
scales’) ; thisis the more likely, as the.tree is especially a native 
of the Western and Southern Coast districts of India, and the 
seeds like those of several other plants are liable te be carried 
to a distance by oceanic currents. : Leeds 
Ainslie speaks of nux-vomica as a drug. which is little used ; 
he rightly states that the pulp of the fruit. is posonous, and 
the authors of the Pharmacographia have since shown that it 
contains strychnine; nevertheless it is eaten by the hornbill 
and other birds. Ho also tells us: that the Vytians are of 
Opinion that if the seeds are not taken in sufficient quantity to 
cause death, they will produce mental derangement, Loureiro 
states that the seeds roasted to blackness are really useful, and 
can be given without danger in fluor albus, In the Concan 
small doses of the seeds are given with aromatics in colic, ‘and 
the juice of the fresh wood (obtained by applying heatto’ the 
Bassia). In European medicine strychnine is usually pre- 
ferred to the crude drug in which the proportion of alka- 
loid varies considerably. In 1883 Professor Bentley drew 
attention to this fact as affecting the strength of the extract, 
Stating that he had. suffered serious personal inconvenience 
from the variation im strength of extracts prepared from 
different kinds of seed. This statement led to the exatina- 
tion of five samples of commercial nux-vomica’‘by Messrs.’Dun-= 
“stan and Short, who found that the proportion’of alkaloid con-— 
tained in them ‘ranged from 2°56 to 3:57 per cent: Subse- 
