N. O. APOCYNAOEiE. 785
employed as a rubefacient in rheumatism, and the blunt-ended branches are introduced into the uterus to procure abortion. According to Dymock, the bark is given in the Konkan, with cocoanut, ghi, and rice, as a remedy for diarrhoea ; the flower- buds are eaten with betel leaves in ague, and the juice, with sandalwood oil and camphor, is employed as a cure for itch.
" Sap mixed with cocoanut is used as a remedy for itch (Talbot)."
Campbell states that in Chutia Nagpur the leaves and root are used medicinally, but that the part best known to the forest tribes of Manbhum is the core of the young wood, which is given to lying-in women, to allay thirst, and for cough. In the Baroda Durbar Catalogue of Medicinal Plants, at the Col. and Ind. Exhb., it is stated that the bark is purgative and used in cases of leprosy.
" This plant is known as Daldna phula in Northern Bengal, where its milky juice has been tried and found to be an effectual purgative. The dose is as much as a grain of parched rice (khai) will absorb, the grain being administered as a pill." (Surgeon-Major C. T. Peters, m.b , in Watt's Dictionary).
Dr. A. J. Amadeo (Pharm. Journ; April 21st, 1888,) has the following account of its medicinal uses in Porto Rico :«— " In small doses (8 to 12 grains) given in emulsion, the milk produces abundant bilious watery stools. The bark is a favourite remedy with the country people for gonorrhoea and gleet. Two ounces of the fresh powdered bark is placed in 8 pints of euu sucree and exposed to the sun for four days, being shaken occasionally. A wine, glassful is administered four or five times a day, together with refreshing and muci- laginous drink's, and the use of tepid baths. The action of the drug is at first purgative, afterwards diuretic. An extract of the bark may be used beginning with 3—4 grains daily to be gradually increased to 14 or 15 grains, or a wine (loz.tol litre) may be given in liqueur glassfuls three times a day. The decoction of the bark is a powerful antiherpetic.
A crystalline, bitter principle C i7 H 72 33 -f 2 H 2 0, obtained by evaporation of the alcoholic extract, melts at 157-158° and forms a colourless solution in concentrated sulphuric acid, which, on warming, turns yellow, reddish -yellow, brownish-red, or black. Its solution in concentrated nitric acid is also colourless, but becomes yellow on warming, and, similarly, the solution in sodium hydroxide turns yellow on boiling. This substance cannot be identical with plumieride, which has been isolated by Boorsma.— J. Ch. S.A.I. ,1897; p. 167. 99
