924 
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
ten minntes in a pint of new milk. This should be strained slightly sweetened 
with lump sugar, and drunk warm. This quantity should be taken twice or 
three times a day, and is liked by the patients. There is no doubt of its 
efficacy as a curative in the earlier, and a palliative in the later stages of 
pulmonary consumption." 
Again, in the B. M. J. for April 6, 1884 p. 664, he mentions the control of 
phthisical cough by smoking the dried leaves of the mullein plant in an 
ordinary tobacco pipe. 
Chemicul composition.— Morin ( Journ . Chin. Med. ii, p. 223) obtained from 
the flowers a yellow volatile oil, a fatty acid, free malic and phosphoric acids, 
malate and phosphate of lime, acetate of potash, uncrystaliizable sugar, gum, 
chlorophyll, and a yellow resinous colouring matter. 
Adolph Latin submitted the leaves to proximate analysis and found the 
constituents to be 0 80 per cent, of a crystalline wax, a trace of volatile oil, 
0'78 per cent, of resin soluble in ether, 1*00 per cent, of resin insoluble in 
ether, but soluble in absolute alcohol, a small quantity of tannin, a bitter 
principle, sugar, mucilage, &c. The moisture in the air-dried sample 
amounted to 5'90 per cent., and the ash to 12*60 per cent. He concludes that 
the plant oontains many of the usual constituents, and a bitter principle 
which may be prepared by exhausting the drug with alcohol, dissolving the 
alcoholic extract in water and agitating with ether or chloroform. Several 
trials failed to secure this substance in a crystalline condition. It was 
found to be soluble in water, ether, alcohol, and chloroform, and to possess a 
deoidedly bitter taste. It responded to none of the tests for a glucoside or 
alkaloid. (Am. Journ. Phnrrn., Feb. 1890. E. L. Janson (1890) found that 
petroleum ether and stronger ether used successively, extracted from the 
flowers about J per cent, in each case. A decided change in the colour of the 
drug was noticed after the extraction with ether, which removed the yellow 
colour, leaving the residue of a dark green. The yellow colouring matter 
was either a part of, or else it was retained by the resin dissolved by ether, 
and it was not found possible to separate it in the pure state. The drug 
after exhaustion with ether yielded 10*06 per cent, to absolute alcohol. A 
considerable portion of this alcoholic extract was soluble in water acidifled 
with hydrochloric acid. When agitated with petroleum ether the acid 
solution yielded some colour to it, and this latter solvent on evaporation 
left a greenish-brown crystalline mass of a strong disagreeable odour and n 
sweet taste, which proved to be an easily decomposable glucoside, Another 
crystalline extractive was obtained by making the above acid solution of the 
alcoholic extract alkaline and agitating with ether; while chloroform subse- 
quently extracted a red-brown amorphous mass. 
Both of these extractives reduced Fehling’s solntion, and many changes in 
colour were noticed, indicating that these substances take some part in the 
colouring matter of the flowers. 
The drng was also found to contain 2 - 49 per cent, of mucilage, 11*78 per 
cent, of carbohydrate corresponding to dextrin, 5'48 per cent, of glucose, 
1*29 per cent, of saccharose, 16*76 per cent, of moisture, 4* II per cent, of ash, 
and 32*75 per cent, of cellulose and lignin. No reaction indicating tannin was 
