198 VETEEINAEY TOXICOLOGY 



RHAMNACE^. 



Botanical Characters. — Two species of tiie Eliamnus, or 

 buckthorn, genus are poisonous — viz., Ehamnus cathar- 

 ticus, the common buckthorn, and R. Frangula, the 

 alder buckthorn. Neither species is very common in 

 Britain, the former less so than the latter, and both 

 grow in hedges or bushy places. The flowers are small 

 and green, and the fruit about the size of a pea, that 

 of R. catharticus being black, and that of R. Frangula dark 

 purple. R. cartharticus usually grows on calcareous, and 

 R. Frangula on peaty or leafy, soil. 



Active Principle. — The fruit contains a glucoside or 

 glucosides, cathartin and frangulin of the anthraquinone 

 group of vegetable purgatives, which embraces the aloes. 

 The bark of Rhamnus Purshianiis (America) yields cascara 

 sagrada. 



E£fects. — The berries are purgatives, and dangerous 

 effects, which are rarely likely, take the form of super- 

 purgation, and need no elaborate detail in this connection. 



Cornevin states, on the authority of an Italian physician 

 (Prota-Giurloeo), that the leaves of R. alaternus (not found 

 in Britain), and also those of Ligustrum vulgare, or privet 

 (g.u.), arrest lactation in the female, and may find useful 

 application on account of this property. 



LEGUMINOS^. 



This family comprises many important poisonous species, 

 few of which are native to Britain, though several are culti- 

 vated. Amongst British wild plants are found Cytisus 

 Scoparius, the common and very abundant broom, which 

 resembles the cultivated Spartium junceum, or Spanish 

 broom, in containing the alkaloid sparteine, and Lathyrus 

 aphaca, the yellow vetchling, which contains a cyanogenetic 

 glucoside like the exotic Phaseolus lunatus, or Java bean (see 

 under Cyanides). 



