344 NOTES ON KUNDOO OR TALLICOONAH OIL. 



The tree which, furnishes the seed from which Tallicoonah or Kundah 

 oil is procured, is found growing abundantly in the Timneh country, and near 

 the colony of Sierra Leone. It is a Meliaceous plant, the Carapa Toulou- 

 couua of the Flore de Senegambie, and is figured in " Sweet's British Flower 

 Garden," p. 72. The fruit is a large somewhat globular five-celled capsule. 

 The seeds (of which there are from eighteen to thirty in each capsule), vary 

 in size from that of a chestnut to a hen's egg ; they are three-cornered, 

 convex on the dorsal surface, and of a brownish or blackish red colour, and 

 rugous. 



At the village of Kent, near Cape Schilling, the oil is manufactured as 

 follows : — The seeds are dried in the sun, and then hung up in wicker racks 

 or hurdles, and exposed to the smoke of the huts. When exposed for a 

 sufficient time, the seeds are roasted, and subjected to trituration in large 

 wooden mortars until reduced to a pulp. The mass is then boiled, when 

 the supernatant oil is removed by skimming. The natives principally 

 manufacture the oil to afford light ; this oil is both good and pleasant to burn. 

 The leaves are used by the Kroomen as thatch. The tree grows to the 

 height of upwards of twenty feet. I believe the medicinal properties of 

 Tallicoonah or Kundah oil are yet but little known in Europe. Among 

 the liberated Africans, the Sherbros and Soosoos, the oil is held in high 

 estimation as an anthelmintic, the negroes and all classes of the colonists 

 being very subject to worms. The sort of worms for which this oil proves 

 efficacious are the tape, lumbrecus, and ascarides, more especially the two 

 former, administered, however, in the form of enemeta ; the oil is successful 

 in bringing away great numbers of the latter. When employed as an 

 enema, one or two ounces may be thrown into the bowels, dissolved in 

 warm water, of a temperature sufficient to retain it in the liquid state. I 

 have used it in large doses (as much as giss.), in Lethargus, a disease of the 

 brain, in which it is most desirable to act upon the bowels with the most 

 powerful drastic purgatives. 



Some of the colonists are in the habit of mixing with the palm and nut 

 oils, used to afford light, a portion of Tallicoonah oil, to prevent their 

 servants from mixing the oil with their food. I have employed it in cases 

 of worms, or when I suspected their existence, in doses proportionate to 

 the age and strength of the patient. In such cases, the dose has ranged 

 from one ounce to one drachm, fluid measure. It is here necessary to. 

 observe that its purgative effects were by no means always uniform. In 

 persons of weak habit of body, and in whom there existed any liability to 

 bowel complaints, the Tallicoonah oil, from its acrid bitter properties, would 

 prove injurious ; but for persons in the opposite condition of body, I can 

 confidently recommend this medicine as a safe and powerful anthelmintic. 

 The usual way I have administered the oil is precisely similar to the modes 

 in which castor or the other fixed oils are given. If given in proper doses, 



* The oil obtained from an allied species, Xylocarpus gmnatum, has also an equal 

 repute in the Eastern Archipelago.— Editor. 



