BULBUS SCILLiE. 691 



man's fist or larger, often weighing more than four pounds. It has the 

 usual structure of a tunicated bulb ; its outer scales are reddish-brown, 

 dry, scarious, and marked with pai'allel veins. The inner are fleshy and 

 juicy, colourless or of a pale rose tint, thick towards the middle, very 

 thin and delicate at the edges, smooth and shining on the surface. The 

 fresh bulb has a mucilaginous, bitter, acrid taste, but not much odour. 



For medicinal use, squill is mostly imported ready dried. The bulbs 

 are collected in the month of August, at which period they are leafless, 

 freed from their dry outer scales, cut transversely into thin slices, and 

 dried in the sun. Thus prepared, the drug appears in the form of narrow, 

 flattish or four-sided curved strips, 1 to 2 inches long, and f to | of an 

 inch wide, flexible, translucent, of a pale dull yellowish colour, or when 

 derived from the red variety, of a decided roseate hue. When thoroughly 

 dried, they become brittle and pulverizable, but readily absorb water to 

 the extent of about 1 1 per cent. Powdered squill by the absorption of 

 water from the air, readily cakes together into a hard mass. 



Microscopic Structure — The officinal portion of the plant being 

 simply modified leaves, has the histological characters proper to many 

 of those organs. The tissue is made up of polyhedral cells, covered on 

 both sides of the scales by an epidermis provided with stomata. It is 

 traversed by numerous vascular bundles, and also exhibits smaller bundles 

 of laticiferous vessels. If thin slices of squill be moistened with dilute 

 alcohol, most of the parenchymatous cells are seen to be loaded with 

 niucilage, which contracts into a jelly on the addition of alcohol. In the 

 interior of this jell}'', crystalline particles are met with consisting of 

 oxalate of calcium. This salt is largely deposited in cells, forming 

 either bundles of needle-shaped crystals,* or large solitary square prisms, 

 frequently a millimetre long. In either case they are enveloped by the 

 mucilaginous matter already mentioned. Oxalate of calcium as occurring 

 in other plants has been shown in many instances to originate in the 

 midst of mucilaginous matter. The fact is remarkably evident in Scilla, 

 especially when examined in polarized light. 



On shaking thin slices of the bulb with water, the crystals are de- 

 posited in sufficient quantity to become visible to the naked eye, though 

 their weight is actually very smaU. Direct estimation of the oxalic acid 

 (by titration with chamaeleon solution) gave us only 307 per cent, of 

 C^aO*,3H-0 from white squill dried at 100° C, which moreover yielded 

 (inly 2 to 5 per cent, of ash. It is these extremely sharp brittle crystals 

 which occasion the itching and redness, and sometimes even vesication, 

 which result from rubbing a slice of fresh squiU on the skin. These 

 eflects, which have long been known, were attributed to a volatile acrid 

 principle, until their true cause was recognized by Schrofl".^ 



The mucilage also contains albuminous matters, hence the orange 

 colour it assumes on addition of iodine. The vascular bundles ai-e 

 accompanied by some rows of longitudinally extended cells, containing 

 a small number of starch granules. In the red squill the colouring 

 matter is contained in many of the parenchymatous cells, others being 

 entirely devoid of it. It turns blackish-green if a persalt of iron be 

 added. 



^ We have found that the slimy juice of occasions when rubbed on the skin both 

 the lesivesoi A gapanthusumbellaius^eTit., itching and redness, lasting for several 

 which is veiy rich in spicular crystals, also hours. 



