Poisonous Effects. — Given in over-doses, colocynth acts as a drastic irritating purgative. Dr. 
Fordyce narrates a case of a woman who was subject to cholic for thirty years in consequence of taking a 
strong infusion in beer. Orfila says, a man swallowed three ounces of colocynth, with the hopes of curing 
a malady with which he had been attacked for several days. A short time afterwards he felt severe pains in 
the epigastrium, and vomited copiously. At the expiration of two hours, he had copious alvine evacua- 
tions ; the lower extremities became bent, his sight was obscured, and he could only hear with great diffi- 
culty ; a slight delirium came on, which was succeeded by vertigo. He was made to drink a great quantity 
of milk, which produced vomiting : ten leeches were applied to the abdomen, and the symptoms yielded by 
degrees. 
Medical Properties and Uses. — Both Hippocrates and Dioscorides were in the habit of em- 
ploying this remedy as a drastic purgative in dropsy, lethargy, and maniacal cases ; and were well acquainted 
with the violence of its effects, if injudiciously administered. Orfila, from his own observations, asserts that 
one or two drachms of it only, applied to the cellular tissue of a man’s leg, produced death in the space of 
twenty-four hours. Its doses and combinations are now well ascertained, and although it is scarcely ever 
prescribed in its simple state, no cathartic is more highly prized, nor oftener used, than the compound 
extract of colocynth, which, combined with calomel, is the common aperient pill of most English prac- 
titioners. 
Colocynth has proved very efficacious in dropsy. 
Sydenham ordered a drachm to be boiled in water for six minutes, and after adding a drachm of Hoff- 
mann’s drops, and an ounce of syrup to a pound of the strained fluid, prescribed a table-spoonful to be 
taken three times a day. 
It is scarcely necessary to observe that pure colocynth is so violent a remedy, that it should be pre- 
scribed only by a master of the art. 
Off. Prep. — Extract, colocynthidis. L. 
Extract, colocynth. comp. L.D. 
Pil. aloes cum colocynth. E. D. 
Gerard in his Historic of Plants, says, “ being boiled in vinegre, and the teeth washed therewith, it is a 
remedy for the tooth-ache, as Mesues teacheth. And the seed is very profitable to keepe and preserve dead 
bodies with ; especially if Aloes and Myrrhe be mixed with it.” 
