276 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. X. 



nauseant and fehrifuge " (the italics are mine. — K. R. K.). The follow- 

 ing quotations, marked (a) (h) and {c) from Watt's " Economic Dic- 

 tionary " (pages quoted), may be usefully read in connection with 

 Mooideen Sheriff's remark just quoted by me in italics : — 



(a) " In an official correspondence forwarded by Mooideen Sheriff 

 to the supreme Government regarding the Pharmacopoeia of India, 

 Dr. Mooideen Sheriff says further of this drug : ' It possesses the 

 emetic and nauseant properties of ipecacuanha .' " (&) '' It is a good 

 substitute for ipeoacuanha, and proves useful in all the diseases * in 

 which the latter is indicated except dysentery." (c) " Doses as an 

 emetic from 45 to 50 grains ; as a nauseant, diaphoretic and febri- 

 fuge from 6 to 10 grains; and as an alterative tonic from 2 to 5 

 grains." These points will be referred to later on. There is one 

 observation in Watt's citations in his Dictionary from writers who 

 have helped him in the compilation of his cyclopsediac work, which I 

 cannot pass unnoticed : " Surgeon Joseph Parker, m. d., Poona," as 

 he then was, is a well known brother-officer of the Indian Medical 

 Service, now a Surgeon-Lieutenant-Uolonel, and the Medical Store- 

 keeper of Bombay. On the testimony of this officer, not sanctioned by 

 personal experience, as the officer himself tjandidly says. Watt enters 

 in his dictionary a remark which I think is of doubtful accuracy. It 

 is to the following effect : — *' The oil of the root-bark is said to be a 

 useful external application in rheumatism." Should this happen to 

 meet the eye of Surgeon-Lieutenant- Colonel Parker, I should like to 

 know if he is still of the same opinion ; and I should be thankful to 

 know if I am wrong in maintaining the view that, botanically speaking, 

 there is no source for any oil in the structure of either the root or the 

 root-bark. So far as I can ascertain at present, I might say that one 

 mio-ht as well " by repeated efforts extract oil from the sea sand''' (as 

 the Marathi proverb goes) as expect to get any oil from either the 

 root or root-bark of Alangium. 



With reference to the quotations (a), (&) and (c) cited above from 



Mooideen Sheriff, I may dispose of his remarks under {h) and (c) by 



saying that they refer to points which I cannot very well discuss in 



this journal by unnecessarily occupying its pages on purely medical 



* The italics are mine.— K.B.K. 



