196 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



The following was said by Major Kirtikar at the Mel- 

 bourne Medical Congress, in exhibiting an extract from the bark 

 prepared by the late Mr. M. C, Periera of Bandra : — About 

 30-40 graius a day, in small doses, are given every third or fourth 

 hour in Intermittent Fevers. The fruit pulp is acid and 

 makes a very pleasant refrigerent drink. When unripe, the 

 fruit pulp is mucilaginous, but as it gets ripe, it assumes the 

 appearance of dry pith, containing dry, powdery, acid, starch- 

 like stuff, enclosed in bundles of fibre and surrounding the seeds. 

 Walz has extracted an active principle from the Bark, called 

 Adansonin. The pulp is an astringent in diarrhoea, like gallic 

 acid. 



Parts used : — The fruit, bark and leaves. 



Use : — It was introduced into India by the Arabians. In 

 Africa, it is used for dysentery, and the leaves are made into 

 poultices and used as a fomentation to painful swellings, or 

 the leaves dried and reduced to powder are called lalo by the 

 Africans, and are used to check excessive perspiration. (Royle.) 

 Duchassing recommends the bark as an antiperiodic in fever. 

 In Bombay, the pulp, mixed with butter-milk, is used as an 

 astringent in diarrhoea and dysentery. In the Concan, the 

 pulp with figs is given in asthma, and a sherbet made of it, 

 with the addition of cumin and sugar, is administered in bilious 

 dyspepsia. It is also given for this affection with Emblic myro- 

 balans, fresh mint, rock-salt, and long pepper. (Dymock.) 



The fruit has been analysed by Messrs. Heckel and 

 Schlagdenhauffen. The authors think that the pulp is rightly 

 used by the natives as a remedy in dysentery. 



The pulp is beneficial in pyrexia of any form of fever, by 

 diminishing the heat and quenching thirst. It has recently 

 proved itself very successful in relieving the night-sweats 

 and febrile flushes in a severe case of consumption. The bark 

 is useful to some extent in simple and in complicated cases of 

 continued and intermittent fevers (Moodeen Sheriff.) 



