196 
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
The following was said by Major Kirtikar at the Mel- 
bourne Medical Congress, in exhibiting an extract from the bark 
prepared by the late Mr. M. C. Periera of Bandra : — About 
30-40 grains a day, in small doses, are given every third or fourth 
hour in Intermittent Fevers. The fruit pulp is acid and 
makes a very pleasant refrigerent drink. When unripe, the 
fruit pulp is mucilaginous, but as it gets ripe, it assumes the 
appearance of dry pith, containing dry, powdery, acid, starch- 
like stuff, enclosed in bundles of fibre and surrounding the seeds. 
Walz has extracted an active principle from the Bark, called 
Adansonin. The pulp is an astringent in diarrhcea, like gallic 
acid. 
Parts used : — The fruit, bark and leaves. 
Use : — It was introduced into India by the Arabians. In 
Africa, it is used for dysentery, and the leaves are made into 
poultices and used as a fomentation to painful swellings, or 
the leaves dried and reduced to powder are called lalo by the 
Africans, and are used to check excessive perspiration. (Royle.) 
Duchassing recommends the bark as an antiperiodic in fever. 
In Bombay, the pulp, mixed with butter-milk, is used as an 
astringent in diarrhoea and dysentery. In the Concari, the 
pulp with figs is given in asthma, and a sherbet made of it, 
with the addition of cumin and sugar, is administered in bilious 
dyspepsia. It is also given for this affection with Emblic myro- 
balans, fresh mint, rock-salt, and long pepper. (Dymock.) 
The fruit has been analysed by Messrs. Heckel and 
Schlagdenhauffen. The authors think that the pulp is rightly 
used by the natives as a remedy in dysentery. 
The pulp is beneficial in pyrexia of any form of fever, by 
diminishing the heat and quenching thirst. It has recently 
proved itself very successful in relieving the night-sweats 
and febrile flushes in a severe case of consumption. The bark 
is useful to some extent in simple and in complicated cases of 
continued and intermittent fevers (Moodeen Sheriff.) 
