^88 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



A large evergreen shrub, with bitter and somewhat fetid 

 properties. Branchlets, leaves, and inflorescence tawny-pubescent. 

 Leaves very large, often more than a foot long, " covered with 

 a dense yellow pubescence, especially on the veins beneath " 

 (Alfred \V. Bennett). The lowest leaflets sometimes compound, 

 the upper ones numerous, very closely toothed or serrate, villous 

 beneath and opposite, 4-6 pair, ovate-lanceolate. Flowers purple, 

 in small distant racemiform panicles, often as long as leaves. 

 Flowers usually hermaphrodite ; Calyx very minute. Petals 

 larger than the Calyx-segments, linear, spathulate. Stamens 

 short, not exceeding the petals in length. Ovary deeply 4-lobed. 

 Drupes entirely free, black, ovoid, Jin. long (Brandis. , J-Jin. 

 (Bennett;, glabrous, reticulated. Albumen 0. 



Uses : — Roxburgh wrote : " From the sensible qualities of the 

 green parts of this plant being somewhat fetid, and simply, 

 though intensely, bitter, it promises to be as good an antidy- 

 senterical medicine as Bruce s Abyssinian Wooginos itself." 



Dr. Mougeot, whose investigaiions into the subject of a cure for dysentery 

 have been attracting attention in Saigon for sometime past, now claims to 

 have discovered a remedy for the disease. This is the seed of the plant 

 named Brucea Sumatrana, belonging to the family Simarubacece, which is 

 found in those parts of Southern China, Lower India, the island of Sunda and 

 tropical America where the malady prevails in its more virulent form. Both 

 the tree and its seed are known in the vernacular of its habitat by the name 

 of kosu or kosam. It may be remembered that several years ago the 

 scientist, Roger, discovered a bacillus which was held to be the cause of 

 dysentery. In experiments which he conducted upon animals, Dr. Mougeot 

 found that, wherever these bacteria were most numerous iu the bowels, the 

 use of the kosu seed, which, by the way, is about a centimetre in length and 

 lies hidden within a small oily kernel, led to their utter destruction. He 

 usually administered from six to ten seeds on the first day and twelve on the 

 second, in which time a change for the better generally became apparent. 

 Eight hundred and seventy-one out of eight hundred and seventy-nine cases 

 experimented upon by Dr. Mougeot, proved successful. — Indian Lancet for lOtli 

 June, 1901. 



Messrs F. B. Power and F. H. Lees find that the seeds contain a small 

 quantity of a hydrolytic enzyme, but no alkaloid ; they contain 1*8 per cent, 

 of tannin. The combined alcoholic and petroleum extracts of the seeds 

 yielded the following substances : (1) A small quantity of a mixture of esters, 

 probably of one of the butyric acids, and having the odour of the crushed 

 seeds ; (2) a very small amount of free formic acid ; (3) 20 per cent, (on the 

 weight of the seeds) of a fatty oil consisting chiefly of the glycerides of oleic, 

 linolic, stearic, and palmitic acids, together with a saturated hydrocarbon, 



