32 MENISPERMACE^. 



small, berry-like fruit.^ Mattioli remarks that as the berries when first 

 brought from the East to Italy had no special name, they got to be 

 called Coccole di Levanted 



Description — The female flower of Anamivta has normally 5 

 ovaries placed on a short gynophore. The latter, as it grows, becomes 

 I'aised into a stalk about | an inch long, articulated at the summit with 

 shorter stalks, each supporting a drupe, which is a matured ovary. The 

 purple drupes thus produced are 1 to 3 in number, of gibbous ovoid 

 form, with the persistent stigma on the straight side, and in a line witli 

 the shorter stalk or carpodium. They grow in a pendulous panicle, a 

 foot or more in length. 



These fruits removed from their stalks and dried have the aspect of 

 little round berries, and constitute the Cocculus Indicus of commerce. 

 As met with in the market they are shortly ovoid or subreniform, -^^ to 

 -^ of an inch long, with a blackish, wrinkled surface, and an obscure 

 ridge running round the back. The shorter stalk, when present, sup- 

 ports the fruit very obliquely. The pericarp, consisting of a wrinkled 

 skin covering a thin woody endocarp, encloses a single reniform seed, 

 into which the endocarp deeply intrudes. In transverse section the 

 seed has a horse-shoe form ; it consists chiefly of albumen, enclosing 

 a pair of large, diverging lanceolate cotyledons, with a short terete 

 radicle.* 



The seed is bitter and oily, the pericarp tasteless. The drug is pre- 

 ferred when of dark colour, free from stalks, and fresh, with the seeds 

 well preserved. 



Microscopic Strutture — The woody endocarp is built up of a 

 peculiar sclerenchymatous tissue, consisting of branched, somewhat 

 elongated cells. They are densely packed, and run in various direc- 

 tions, showing but small cavities. The parcnehyme of the seed is loaded 

 with crystallized fatty matter. 



Chemical Composition — Picrotoxin, a crystal] IznLlo substance 

 occurring in the seed to the extent of f to 1 per cent., was observed by 

 Boullay, as early as 1812, and is the source of the poisonous property 

 of the drug. Picrotoxin does not neutralize acids. It dissolves in 

 water and in alkalis ; the solution in the latter reduces cupric or bis- 

 mutic oxide like the sugars, but to a much smaller extent than glucose. 

 The alcoholic solutions deviate the ray of polarized light to the left. 

 The aqueous solution of picrotoxin is not altered by any metallic salt, 

 or by tannin, iodic acid, iodohydrargyrate or bichromate of potassium 

 — in fact by none of the reagents which affect the alkaloids. It msiy 

 thus be easily distinguished from the bitter poisonous alkaloids, 

 although in its behaviour with concentrated sulphuric acid and bichro- 

 mate of potassium it somewhat resembles strychnine, as shown in 1867 

 by Kohler. 



Picrotoxin melts at 200° C. ; its composition, C'TI^'O*, as ascertaine<l 

 in 1877 by Paterno and Oglialoro, is the same as that of everninic, 



^ Frutto d'alcnni alberi, e d'alcune piante, * Quoted by J. J. von Tscliudi, Die Koh- 



o erbe salvatiche, come cipresso, ginepro, kelskih-ner und das Pikrotoxin, St. Gallen, 



alloro, pugnitopo, e lentischio, e simili. — 1847. 



Lat. bacca ; Gr. &Kp6Spvn. — Vocabolario ^ The fruit should be macerated in oi'der 



degli Accademici delta Crimea. to examine its stnictiire. 



