288 
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
A large evergreen shrub, with bitter and somewhat fetid 
properties. Branchlets, leaves, and inflorescence tawny-pubescent. 
Leaves very large, often more than a foot long, “ covered with 
a dense yellow pubescence, especially on the veins beneath ” 
(Alfred W. Bennett). The lowest leaflets sometimes compound, 
the upper ones numerous, very closely toothed or serrate, villous 
beneath and opposite, 4-6 pair, ovate-lanceolate. Flowers purple, 
in small distant racemiform panicles, often as long as leaves. 
Flowers usually hermaphrodite ; Calyx very minute. Petals 
larger than the Calyx-segments, linear, spathulate. Stamens 
short, not exceeding the petals in length. Ovary deeply 4-lobed. 
Drupes entirely free, black, ovoid, ^in. long (Brandis , ^-gin. 
(Bennett;, glabrous, reticulated. Albumen 0. 
Uses : — Roxburgh wrote : “ From the sensible qualities of the 
green parts of this plant being somewhat fetid, and simply, 
though intensely, bitter, it promises to be as good an antidy- 
senterical medicine as Bruce's Abyssinian Woogmos itself.” 
DR. Mougeot, whose investigations into the subject of a cure for dysentery 
have been attracting attention in Saigon for sometime past, now claims to 
have discovered a remedy for the disease. This is the seed of the plant 
named Bruceu Sumatrana, belonging to the family Sitnarubacece, which is 
found iu those parts of Southern China, Lower India, the island of Suuda and 
tropical America where the malady prevails in its more'virulent form. Both 
the tree and its seed are known in the vernacular of its luibitat by the name 
of kosu or kosum. It may be remembered that several years ago the 
scientist, Roger, discovered a bacillus which was held to be the cause of 
dysentery. In experiments which he conducted upon animals, Dr. Mougeot 
found that, wherever these bacteria were most numerous iu the bowels, the 
use of the kosu seed, which, by the way, is about a centimetre iu length and 
lies hidden within a small oily kernel, led to their utter destruction. He 
usually administered from six to ten seeds on the first day and twelve on the 
second, in which time a change for the better generally became apparent. 
Eight hundred and seventy-one out of eight hundred and seventy-nine cases 
experimented upon by Dr. Mougeot. proved successlul . — Indian Lancet for 10th 
June, 1901. 
Messrs P. B. Lower and P. H. Lees find that the seeds contain a small 
quantity of a hydrolytic enzyme, but no alkaloid ; they contain 18 per cent, 
of tannin. The combined alcoholic and petroleum extracts of tjie seeds 
yielded the following substances : (l) A small quantity of a mixture of esters, 
probably of one of the butyric acids, aud having the odour of the crushed 
seeds ; (2) a very small amount of free formic acid ; (3) 20 per cent, (on the 
weight of the seeds) of a fatty oil consisting chiefly of the glycerides of oleic, 
linolic, stearic, and palmitic acids, together with a saturated hydrocarbon, 
