552 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
strictly medicinal, derived from this Order:—1, Tapioca, so well known as an 
article of diet for the sick, prepared from the root of Manihot utilissima , Pohl; 
2, Caoutchouc, or india-rubber, the dried milky juice of Siphonia elastica , Pers.; 
3, Chinese vegetable tallow, from the seeds of Stillingia sebifera , Mich.; and 4, 
a kind of lac, called, from the locality in which it is obtained, Ceylon Lac , the 
produce of Croton lacciferum. 
Such is a hasty sketch of the Natural Order Euphorbiacese , looked at from a 
medical point of view, and it may be safely asserted that in no other Natural 
Order, not even in Leguminosse , do we find plants possessed of such diversified 
virtues. From it, as we have seen, we are able to obtain fatal poisons, and a 
mild nutritious article of diet for the sick; purgatives, astringents, tonics, 
alteratives, diuretics, anthelmintics, emmenagogues, lactagogues, rubifacients, 
counter-irritants, and a mild emollient tallow, not altogether unsuited for phar¬ 
maceutical and medicinal purposes as an emollient. 
From what has now been said, it will be manifest that my statement as to this 
Natural Order opening a wide field of research, is strictly correct. To have 
attempted to grapple with the whole subject in the compass of a single short 
lecture would, it is evident, have been utterly futile; I shall, therefore, content 
myself this evening with noticing some facts and general ideas with reference to 
the purgative action of the oleaginous seeds of some individuals of this Order, 
viz. Croton Tiglium (the Croton Oil plant), Curcas purgans and C. multifidus 
(English and French Physic Nuts), Euphorbia Lathyris (Caper Spurge), llura, 
crepitans , Ricinus communis (Castor Oil plant), Anda Gomesii , Aleurites triloba, 
and Omphalea triandra. 
It will serve materially to elucidate and confirm the observations I purpose 
making at the conclusion of this paper, if we pass in review each of these articles 
individually, which we will do as briefly as the importance of the subject permits. 
And it may serve still further to simplify the subject to say, in this place, a few 
words as to the structure of the seeds which are to engage our attention this 
evening. Each seed, then, has an outer, hard, brittle case or husk (testa) ; 
lining this, is a fine, thin, brittle, more or less light-coloured membrane ( endo •• 
carp ); this encloses a whitish or yellowish oily albumen, or nucleus, popularly 
called the kernel. Within the two halves or valves of this albumen is enclosed 
the embryo, with its large foliaceous cotyledons. We will consider the seeds 
in order, according to their degree of potency. 
1. Croton seeds, the produce of Croton Tiglium , Lin., a small tree, inhabit¬ 
ing the tropical portion of the Eastern hemisphere. In their crude state these 
seeds are possessed of powerfully irritant properties. The only case of poison¬ 
ing by them, that I have met with, is a notice in Pereira’s ‘Materia Medica’ 
(vol. ii. pt. i. p. 406), given on the authority of the late Dr. Wallich, in 
which it is stated that one fresh seed proved fatal to a labourer in the Calcutta 
Botanical Gardens. Cases of poisoning by the expressed oil, however, are not 
very rare ; several such are on record, and are mentioned in the works of Chris- 
tison, Taylor, and other toxicologists. The general train of symptoms are intense 
and persistent burning sensation in the fauces and oesophagus, abdominal ten¬ 
derness and pain, violent efforts at vomiting, hypercatharsis,laborious breathing, 
cold sweats, blueness of the lips and fingers, an almost imperceptible pulse, and 
intense thirst. The principal appearances on dissection are an inflamed and 
softened state of the intestinal mucous membrane ; indeed the oil, and it is pre¬ 
sumed also the seeds, in their crude state, exercise a specific influence on this 
membrane, as, when death has followed in animals into whose systems the oil 
has been introduced by injection into the veins, the whole of the intestinal 
canal has been found in a state of inflammation, and when applied to a blistered 
or denuded surface, it speedily induces a cathartic operation. It is deserving of 
notice, that in a case of poisoning by the inhalation of the dust of the seeds, 
