46 THOS. L. BANCROFT. 



In a work by Louis Bouton entitled " Medicinal Plants of 

 Mauritius," is the following account of the medicinal use of 

 Carissa xylopicron : — "The Bois amere is according to Pellicot, a 

 physician, who long resided in the Mauritius, a sovereign remedy 

 in gonorrhoea. Cossigny observes that it might be useful in other 

 diseases, such as ulceration of the bladder, uterus, and in the 

 whites or nuor albus. Possesses, according to Du Petit Thouars, 

 a bitter flavour, which it communicates to the water when infused 

 and is considered at Bourbon as very tonic. The bark is frequently 

 used by the Creoles in diseases of the urinary organs, nephritic 

 calcules." 



I wish here to suggest the advisability of investigations in 

 Europe being made of this Mauritius species, for if the active 

 principle of the genus be considered of value therapeutically, as 

 appears to me very probable, it is to such a plant that recourse 

 would have to be made as the subject of this paper is a small 

 plant and not plentiful. The genus Carissa being so closely 

 allied to Acokanthera, led me to suspect that the active principle 

 might be the same, viz. : the glucoside Ouabin, but as far as I 

 have been able to ascertain without the assistance of chemists, it 

 would appear that it is quite distinct. In the Pharmaceutical 

 Journal, May 13, 1893, there is a reprint of Professor Fraser's 

 paper on the " Way Nyika Arrow-poison," which is derived from 

 an Acokanthera; the active principle is there described as a gluco- 

 side crystallising from a watery solution in quadrangular plates 

 and in needle-shaped crystals from alcohol ; it is stated also that 

 a saturated solution of the substance in water is tasteless. 



Now the active principle under observation separates out in 

 minute globular specks extremely like white blood corpuscles, not 

 only from a watery, but from alcoholic solution, and moreover is 

 very bitter. It neither agreed with the appearances and reactions 

 of Strophanthin as given by Professor Fraser.* 



It is a curious circumstance that so many of the Apocynacese 

 are poisonous, and of these so many are cardiac poisons of the 



* On the Chemistry of Strophanthin— British Medical Journal, July 

 23, 1887. 



