FEDALINEM. 35 



powdered fruit with ghi, sugar, and spices; it is taken with 

 milk. 



Dr. Emerson has observed that the juice is used as a local 

 application to aphthae. 



P. Miirex must not be confounded with the great Gokhru or 

 Hasak of Mahometan medical writers, which is Xanthium 



Strumarhim. 



European writers upon Indian drugs bear evidence to the 

 correctness of the native estimate of the medicinal value of 

 Gokhru, and it has lately been introduced into European practice 

 as a remedy for nocturnal seminal emissions, incontinence of 

 urine and impotence. {Praclifmie>\ XVII., 381.) It has been 

 given in an infusion of 1 oz. of the fruit to 1 pint of boiling 

 distilled water^ this quantity being taken daily, 



ption. — A spreading, low succulent plant with oval, 

 dentate, obtusely pointed leaves; pedicels axillary, 1 -flowered, 

 shorter than the petiole, 1 to 2, or more dark -brown glandular 

 bodies situated near the axils; flowers yellow ; tube of corolla 

 about 1 inch long ; fruit pendulous^ about ^ an inch long, and 

 i inch in diameter at the base, 4-angled, with a straight 

 spine at the base of each angular ridge ; above the spines is a 

 narrow portion which is inserted into the 5-clawed calyx ; 

 when dry the fruit is corky, it is divided into two cells ; the 

 seeds are elongated, narrow, and four in number. The young 

 branches, petioles, under- surface of leaves and immature cap- 

 sules have a frosted appearance, which is due to the presence of 

 numerous small, sessile, brilliant, crystalline, 4 to 5 -partite 

 glands. The substance o£ the fruit consists, in great part, of 

 dense fibro-vascular tissue, forming a kind of 4-winged nut ■ 

 the corky part consists of delicate cellular tissue ; when fresh 



it is green and succulent. 



peculiar 



agreeable musky odour. Simple agitation of the young 

 branches in water, without any crushing, produces a viscid 

 muciloge like white of egg. We find from experiment that 

 the glandular crystalline bodies described a^bove are the source 

 of the mucilage ; if they are gently scraped from the under- 



