YERBENACEJE. 75 



the puerperal state of women in India. According to Ainslie, 

 the jMahomctans are in the habit of smoking the dried leaves in 

 cases of headache and catarrh. The dried fruit is deemed 

 vermifuge. {Phar. of India, p. 1G3-) 



Description.- — A shrub growing in patches; branchlets, 



panicle, and underside of the leaves white, with a fine tomcn- 

 turn; leaves petiolod^ 3 to- 5 foliolate; leaflets lanceolate, long, 

 acuminated, entire, or coarsely cut and crenated ; pnnicle termi- 

 nal, pyramidal; flowers bluish- white to blue; berry black, the 

 size of a pea. The habit of the shrub is variable; when grow- 

 ing near the sea it has almost always 3-foliolate entire leaves, 

 the leaflets being attenuated into the petioles ; inland, the shrub 

 has a more delicate appearance; the petioles of the leaves are 

 much lon^i'er and the leaflets, from 3 to 5 in number, are often 



o 



serrated. The sen\ated variety is preferred for medicinal 

 purposes, and is called Katri. The leaves of both varieties 

 appear to be equally aromatic ; the odour reminds one of the 



English Bog Myrtle {M?jrica Gale, Linn,) ; the taste is bitter 

 and nauseous. The berry is- very feebly aromatic. In' Anthony 

 Collin's French Translation of Clusius, Lyons, 1602, there arc 

 figures of both plants, which, though old and quaint, represent 

 the general appearance very fairly. 



Chemical conqwsifion. — The leaves contain principally an 

 essential oil and a resin. The oil possesses the odour of the 

 drug and is neutral and almost colourless. The resin dissolves 

 in alkaline solutions with a reddish-brown colour, softens below 

 40° C., and gives off aromatic vapours when heated. A tincture 

 of the drug gives a green colour withforric chloride. The ash 

 of the air-dried leaves amounts to 7*75 per cent. 



The fruits contain an acid resin, an astringent organic acid 

 giving a green colour with ferric salts and a precipitate with 

 gelatine, malic acid, traces of an alkaloid and colouring matter. 

 The fruits previously dried at 100^ gave 6-8 per cent, of ash. 



Vitex Agnus-castus, Lwn. Mahometan physicians, 

 under the Arabic name of Athlakand the Persian Panjanguslit, 



