88 
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
invariably entire ; the lower-most, if any, more or less of a minute 
silvery hoariness especially at the back. Flowers corymbose, 
sweet-scented. Petals always of a uniform bright golden 
yellow, not stained with brown or blood-red as in the Garden 
Ch. pheiri of England, though the calyx is purplish. Siliqua 
racemose, erect l|-2 in. long, covered with close hairs chiefly, 
if not altogether, pointing upwards. Style prominent, crowned 
with a cloven stigma. Seeds flat, with a narrow membranous, 
deciduous border at one side as well as the summit of each. 
Farts used : — The flowers and seeds. 
Uses : — The flowers, said to be cardiac and emmenago- 
gue, are used in paralysis and impotence. The seed is also 
used as an aphrodisiac (Irvine!. 
The dried petals are much used in Upper India as an 
aromatic stimulant (O’Shaughnessy). 
The flowers are employed to make a medicated oil ; for 
this purpose they are boiled in olive oil ; this prepared oil 
is much used for enemata (Year-Book of Pharmacy, 1874, p. 
622). 
t 
By extracting the flowers with low-bfliling solvents, a dark-coloured 
pasty extract is obtained which (after evaporation of the solvent and separa- 
tion from fatty and waxy matters by strong alcohol) yields, on distillation 
with steam, a yellowish oil of unpleasant odour having a specific gravity 
of 1*001, and distilling under 3 mm. pressure between 40° and 160°C. the 
yield is about 0 06 per cent. The alcoholic solution shows a feeble bluish 
fluorescence. A highly diluted alcoholic solution possesses the characteristic 
odour of the flowers. The oil is found to contain : — Compounds resembling 
mustard oil, ketones and aldehydes (having the odors of Violets and Haw- 
thorn), nerol, geraniol, benzyl, linalool, indole, methyl antheranilate, acetic 
acid (probably in combination with benzyl alcohol and linalool), salicylic acid 
(probably as methyl salicylate) and traces of phenols and lactones. (J. Ch. I. 
July 15, 1911, p. 829). 
Cheiranthin is obtained by evaporating the alcoholic or aqueous ex- 
tract of the leaves or seeds of the wall flower, removing the inactive oils by 
light petroleum, treating with lead acetate, and finally salting out the gluco- 
side with magnesium, Sodium or ammonium sulphate, when it separates in 
small yellow flakes, from which the salts may be removed by means of alcohol 
and ether. It may also be precipitated by tannin, and in either case still 
contains an active alkaloid which may be removed by shaking with ether or 
ethylic acetate. Cheiranthin brings about the characteristic rest is frogs. 
J. Ch. S. LX.XVI., pt. I (1899), p. 378. 
