TEE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY, 497 



which, in India, likewise there is an endless number. — K. R. K.), 

 " but dangerous to patients." Sowerby further adds that '* the berries 

 have produced vomiting when eaten by children." Our Indian 

 children, half-starved though they are, and always in quest of field 

 and forest fruit, never touch the fruit of the Indian species of Bryony 

 I am describing. The fruit literally rots and dehisces on the plant. 

 But there is one plant belonging to the N. 0. JSd'enispei'macece known 

 as Cah.imha^ and used in this country very largely and usefully too 

 for medical purposes — the Jateorhiza calumha of Miers, formerly 

 known as Cocedus palmatus^ the commercial parcels of which, said 

 O'Shaughnessy more than fifty years ago,* " are adulterated with 

 Bryony dyed ivith turmeric." It is but natural that, when Calumha 

 is so adulterated and sold in Indian bazaars, guileless and needy 

 sufferers, having recourse to the adulterated root, under the guidance 

 of the self-constituted medical advisers spoken of by Sowerby, should 

 suffer from symptoms of violent vomiting and diarrhoea. No medical 

 man prescribing Cahir.iba ever anticipates such results, I have 

 prescribed Calumha as a powerful tonic in dyspepsia, and as an 

 alterative, especially in skin affections due to deficient action of the 

 skin, but I have hitherto not had the experience of seeing any of my 

 patients suffer from the effects of violent vomiting and diarrhoea 

 when undergoing a course of Calumha treatment at my hands ] for, 

 knowing full well that the druggist and the herbalist often adulterate 

 the Calumia root with turmeric-dyed roots of the Indian species of 

 Bryony, 1 have always taken the precaution of selecting the proper 

 root. The root, of Calumha is *' perforated in the centre," says 

 O'Shaughnessy, and " is met in slices of one or two inches diameter 

 half-an-inch thick, much wrinkled, greyish externally, bright 

 yellow within." It is not at all difficult for a careful observer to 

 differentiate from the slices of the true falumha root, slices of the 

 Bryony root, dyed with turmeric. Even although in size — ?,,?,, in 

 diameter and thickness— the slices of the root of Bryony may exactly 

 correspond with those of the Calumha root^ note that the Bryony root 

 has not the central perforations spoken of hy C Shaitghnessy as existing 

 in the Calumba root ; then again the external coat of the Bryony root 



^ Vide p. 196, Bengal Dispensatory, Calcutta, 1841, 



