List of herbs with their medicinal uses: 1. Aconitum Napellus 2. Carum Carui 3. Cephaelis Ipecacuanha 4. Chenopodium Album 5. Chrysanthemum Cinerari Folium 6. Curcuma Longa 7. Dhattura 8. Hemidesmus Indicus 9. Hibiscus Esculentus 10. Indigofera Tinctoria 11. Mucuna Pruriens.
1. Aconitum Napellus:
An herbaceous perennial with a short fleshy root-stock or tuber tapering below, and passing insensibly into a long slender root, giving off numerous branches, skin dark brown or nearly black, interior white; from the upper part of the rootstock are given off one or more very short thick lateral shoots each of which develops at the end a new pale-coloured tuber with a terminal bud and passing below into a filiform root.
Flowering stem solitary, stout, erect, 2-4 feet high, un-branched, smooth, slightly hairy above, green. Leaves alternate, long-stalked, spreading, very deeply cut palmately into 5 or 3 segments, which are again deeply and irregularly divided into oblong acute laciniae, dark green and shining above, paler beneath and slightly hairy.
Flowers large, not very numerous, stalked, forming an erect rather lax terminal raceme; pedicels erect, downy, thickened at the end, in the axils of short, lanceolate bracts, and with two smaller bracts close to each flower. Sepals 5, petaloid, very unequal, deciduous, imbricate, dark blueish-purple, the upper one large, helmet-shaped, laterally compressed, pointed, it is not generally cultivated, the Pharmacopoeia of that country directs the recently dried leaves to be used.
Medical Properties and Uses:
Aconite is a powerful sedative, anodyne, diuretic, and antiphlogistic; and in large doses a virulent poison. Under the influence of aconite, the force of the circulation is reduced, and the frequency of the respirations diminished: and in fatal doses there is loss of sight, hearing, and feeling, followed by convulsions, syncope, and death. Locally applied to a painful part, it first produces a tingling sensation, which is succeeded by numbness and the cessation of pain.
In all cases whether taken internally, or used as an external application, it appears at first to cause contraction of the pupil of the eye, and subsequently it is said dilatation. So far, however, as the alkaloid aconitia is concerned, Dr. John Harley says, that in poisonous doses, the pupil may be slightly dilated, or in the severer forms of poisoning contracted.
Aconite has been given internally in acute and chronic rheumatism, gout, and neuralgia; many painful affections of the heart, as angina pectoris, hypertrophy, and nervous palpitations; to relieve pain in carcinomatous affections; as an antiphlogistic in various inflammatory diseases, as pleurisy, pericarditis, pneumonia, erysipelas, and cynanche tonsillaris.
Dr. Sidney Ringer, indeed, believes that if given sufficiently early, and in constantly repeated minute doses, it can cut short and limit the intensity of most acute inflammations. As a diuretic, it is often given with benefit in dropsies.
Notwithstanding the undoubted beneficial effects of aconite, it is but little employed internally, except by a few practitioners, a result probably due in a great measure to the dangerous symptoms of depression which sometimes ensue from its use; hence, its action should in all cases be carefully watched; moreover, its effects are said to be only very temporary.
Externally applied in the form of the official liniment, or of the liniment combined with chloroform, it is often of great value in different forms of neuralgia, and in chronic rheumatism; but care must be taken not to apply it to abraded surfaces, lest it’s too rapid absorption under such circumstances should produce poisonous symptoms.
2. Carum Carui:
Biennial (or annual), root tapering, brown, often branched below. Stem erect, slender, cylindrical, hollow, faintly striate, smooth, much branched, branches ascending. Root-leaves several, 6-9 inches long, on rather long petioles, narrowly triangular in outline, bi- or tri-pinnate, primary pinnae sessile, opposite, closely placed so as to overlap at the base, broadly triangular in outline, ultimate divisions linear, acuminate, glabrous, pale green; stem-leaves alternate, small, with large sheathing carious brown petioles, pinnate or bipinnate, the ultimate segments very narrow and pointed; at the base of the sheathing petiole on either side is a sessile pinnate stipule with filiform segments.
Umbels numerous, long-stalked, often irregular, of about 8-10 slender rays, involucre of 1 or few filiform bracts, or wanting, partial involucres 0 or a single small bract. Flowers small, about 1/10 inch across, the central ones usually barren. Calyxtube obsolete, Petals broadly oval, notched, with an entire inflexed apex, white, stylopod conical.
Fruits nearly 1/6 inch long, oblong ovoid, slightly compressed laterally, capped by the short spreading styles, smooth, scarcely constricted at the commissure which is flat, primary ridges prominent, narrow, blunt, pale, equal, vittae large, one in each furrow, and two on the commissural face, dark brown, mericarps somewhat curved, readily separating from the bifid carpophore, and remaining suspended by their apex.
Caraway oil is primarily used like caraway seeds in flavouring several food products, and in medicine as carminative. It is the main ingredient in the Scandinavian “snaps.” and the German “kummel”. It is employed in gargle preparations, toothpaste flavours, chewing gum, candy, and as a masking agent in bad-tasting pharmaceutical preparations and obnoxious insecticides. It also exhibits neurotropic anti-spasmodic activity.
In mixture with alcohol and castor oil, it is used for the treatment of scabies. The essential oil shows moderate anti-bacterial and anti-fungal property against several bacteria and fungi. Decarvonised oil is sold in the market for scenting cheap soaps, in jasmine bases, and tabac perfumes.
The exhausted fruits (seed-cake) can be used as cattle feed; they contain- crude protein, 20-24 and fat, 14-16%. They are sometimes used as a substitute for the genuine fruits.
Medicinal Action and Uses:
Both fruit and oil possess aromatic, stimulant and carminative properties. Caraway was widely employed at one time as a carminative cordial, and was recommended in dyspepsia and symptoms attending hysteria and other disorders. It possesses some tonic property and forms a pleasant stomachic.
Its former extensive employment in medicine has much decreased in recent years, and the oil and fruit are now principally employed as adjuncts to other medicines as corrective or flavouring agents, combined with purgatives.
For flatulent indigestion, however, 1 to 4 drops of the essential oil of caraway given on a lump of sugar, or in a teaspoonful of water, will be found efficacious. Distilled caraway water is considered a useful remedy in the flatulent colic of infants, and is an excellent vehicle for children’s medicine. When sweetened, its flavour is agreeable.
One ounce of the bruised seeds infused for 6 hours in a pint of cold water makes a good caraway julep for infants, from I to 3 tea-spoonsful being given for a dose.
The bruised seeds, pounded with the crumb of a hot new loaf and a little spirit to moisten, was an old-fashioned remedy for bad earache. The powder of the seeds, made into a poultice, will also take away bruises.
3. Cephaelis Ipecacuanha:
A half-shrubby perennial, roots several, spreading horizontally from their origin, at first slender and white, when fully grown about 1/5 inch in diameter, long, scarcely branched, orange-brown, irregularly bent and twisted, covered with a very thick bark which is deeply and closely furrowed transversely along the whole length so as to form narrow rings.
Stem more or less rhizomatous and rooting, or decumbent, or erect, not more than 18 inches long, woody, rounded, knotted and marked with leaf scars, smooth and grey at the base, quadrangular, pubescent, and green above, simple or slightly branched.
Leaves few, somewhat crowded at the upper part of the stem, opposite, shortly stalked, stipules large, united at the base, where are several ovoid glands, persistent, adpressed to the stem, whitish, about as long as the petiole, deeply cut into four subulate laciniae, blade 2—4 inches long or more, oval, acute or blunt at the apex, entire and more or less wavy on the margin, thick, with a few hairs on the edge, dark-green and nearly smooth above, paler, somewhat pubescent and with prominent veins beneath.
Flowers small, sessile, about 10—20 together, in a dense head supported on a cylindrical, pubescent, purplish, axillary but apparently terminal peduncle, at first erect, afterwards bent downwards, and surrounded by an involucre of four ovate, entire, downy, unequal bracts; a small acute pubescent bract accompanies each flower. Calyx adherent, downy, the limb free, of 5 short, triangular-ovate, acute, irregularly toothed segments.
Corolla funnel- shaped, hairy outside, white, tube much longer than the calyx- segments, slightly hairy within, limb shallowly cut into 5 ovate, pointed, spreading or somewhat reflexed lobes.
Stamens 5, inserted at about the middle of the tube, filaments either very short so that the anthers are included in the tube of the corolla, or elongated so as to bring them up to its mouth, anthers 2-celled, linear-oblong. Ovary inferior, with a fleshy epigenous disk on the top, 2-celled, with a single erect ovule in each cell, style either short (to about the middle of the corolla tube) or long (exerted considerably beyond its mouth), stigma 2-lobed, papillose.
Fruit several in a small cluster at the end of the reflexed peduncle, fleshy, smooth, shining, deep purple-violet, about ½ inch long or a little more, broadly ovoid, somewhat tapering or flattened at the top, where it is marked by the scars of the calyx-lobes, pulp whitish, pasty, enclosing 2 hard, stony pyrenes, convex on the outer surface, flattened on the inner, which is grooved from top to bottom. Seed solitary in each pyrene, and similar to it in form, testa membranous, embryo small, straight, at the base of the abundant horny endosperm.
Medicinal Action and Uses:
In large doses, Ipecacuanha root is emetic; in smaller doses, diaphoretic and expectorant, and in still smaller, stimulating to the stomach, intestines and liver, exciting appetite and facilitating digestion.
The dose of the powdered root is ¼ to 2 grains when an expectorant action is desired (it is frequently used in the treatment of bronchitis and laryngitis, combined with other drugs, aiding in the expulsion of the morbid product), and from 15 to 30 grains when given as an emetic, which is one of its most valuable functions.
The Pharmacopoeias contain a very large number of preparations of Ipecacuanha, most of which are standardized.
Ipecacuanha has been known for more than a century to benefit amoebic (or tropical) dysentery, and is regarded as the specific treatment, but the administration of the drug by mouth was limited by its action as an emetic. Sir Leonard Rogers showed in 1912 that subcutaneous injections of the alkaloid Emetine, the chief active principle present in Ipecacuanha usually produced a rapid cure in cases of amoebic dysentery. The toxic action of Emetine on the heart must be watched. A preparation from which the Emetine has been removed, known as de-emetized Ipecacuanha, is also in use for cases of dysentery.
The diaphoretic properties are employed in the Pulvis Ipecacuanhuea compositus, or Dover’s Powder, which contains 1 part of Ipecacuanha powder and 1 part of Opium in 10.
When applied to the skin, Ipecacuanha powder acts as a powerful irritant, even to the extent of causing postulations.
When inhaled, it causes sneezing and a mild inflammation of the nasal mucous membrane.
Toxic doses cause gastro-enteritis, cardiac failure, dilation of the blood-vessels, severe bronchitis and pulmonary inflammation.
4. Chenopodium Album:
A polymorphous, mealy-white, erect herb, upto 3.5 m in height, found wild up to an altitude of 4,700 m, and cultivated throughout India. Stems rarely slender, angled, often striped green, red or purple; leaves rhomboid, deltoid to lanceolate, upper entire, lower toothed or irregularly lobed, extremely variable in cultivated forms, 10-15 cm long, petioles often as long as the thick blade; flowers in clusters forming a compact or loosely panicled spikes in axils; utricles with round, compressed, shining black seeds, possessing sharp margins.
The herb is a common weed during summer and winter in waste places and in the fields of wheat, barley, mustard and gram and reduces their yield. The weeds are low-growing while the cultivated plants are tall-growing and leafy. The grain-yielding forms also are tall with hollow, but sturdy, angular, ribbed stems with massive inflorescence.
They are cultivated for leaf and grain on the North-western hills in the Kulu Valley, at 1,500-2,100 m and in Shimla. The crop is generally grown mixed with rice, soybean, finger millet, potatoes and maize. The summer-crop is somewhat bitter. It grows on all types of well- drained soils.
Medicinal Uses:
The herb is laxative, anthelmintic and cardiotonic. The leaves are anti-scorbutic; they yield ascaridole, which can be used to treat round and hookworms. The juice is used for treating burns. The powdered plant (25-50%), when mixed with normal food, was reported to suppress oestrus cycle; alcoholic extract of leaf, however, did not exhibit any activity.
A fine powder of the leaves is dusted to allay irritation, A decoction of the aerial parts, mixed with alcohol, is rubbed on the body affected by arthritis and rheumatism. The young shoots yield a green dye.
The air-borne pollen causes summer hay fever, but an extract of it is used to a slight extent as an antigen for hay fever. The antigenic extracts of the pollen grains at a concentration of 0.001 g/ ml produced skin-reactions in allergic patients. Patients with asthma and atopic dermatosis showed significantly higher mean IgE level than those suffering from asthma and rhinitis with conjunctivitis.
5. Chrysanthemum Cinerari Folium:
A tufted, perennial herb, up to 60 cm in height, covered with pale grey pubescence, introduced into Jammu and Kashmir and the Nilgiris for cultivation. Leaves alternate, pinnate, 10-30 cm long; capitula 3-4 cm in diam, borne singly on long slender peduncles, each capitulum bearing several yellow disc florets on a receptacle, surrounded by a ring of white or cream-coloured ray florets; achenes c 4 mm long; tapering, 5-ribbed, pale brown, one-seeded.
Pyrethrum is used as an insecticide in a number of ways, in the form of powder, sprays, aerosol, coils, creams and ointment.
Powder:
The flowers finely ground and mixed with some inert carriers are used as an insecticide to control a large number of insects. These are specially useful in eradicating cockroaches, crickets, silverfish, ant, lice and insects found in kitchen, food stores and refuse dumps. Pyrethrum powder can also be used to protect stored food grains against insect pests. For this purpose, pyrethrum powder along with some inert carrier is mixed with food grain in sacks or tins.
Liquid Sprays:
Both oil-based as well as water-based sprays are being used. In oil-based sprays pyrethrum oleoresin or its refined extract is diluted with certain petroleum products, such as kerosene and small amount of synergist such as piperony butoxide. Water-based sprays contain pyrethrum extract, the synergist, an emulsifier and a solvent like commercial xylene.
These sprays are used in factories, hospitals, food-processing industries and food-grain stores. These are also used as livestock sprays for control of parasitic insects like ticks, mites, flies and midges in animal houses and barns.
Aerosols:
These are very fine droplets of pyrethrins which remain suspended in the air for long periods. Flying insects passing through the suspended droplets accumulate lethal doses of pyrethrins and are killed. Aerosols, often referred to as ‘bombs’ consist of a metal container with a release mechanism filled with a propellent mixture of Freon-11 and Freon-12 along with refined pyrethrum extract in colourless kerosene or water-based emulsion.
Aerosols are very effective for control of flying insects like flies and mosquitoes and according to International Civil Aviation Regulations only pyrethrum aerosols can be used for disinfestation of passenger aircrafts.
Coils:
Pyrethrum smoke produced from smouldering coils or sticks has proved very effective against mosquitoes, midges and other household insects. The coils are made from finely ground pyrethrum powder, organic filler and a binder. Japan and Hong Kong are the main producers of pyrethrum coils. It is considered to be the cheapest method to control mosquitoes in humid tropics.
Ointments and Creams:
Pyrethrum ointments and creams are mostly used for control of parasitic insects in animals. Their main ingredients are pyrethrum extract, a synergist, wax, lactic acid, glycerine or sorbitol. It is useful as an anthelmintic against Ascaris lineata and other intestinal parasites.
In the form of an extract containing 0.75 per cent combined pyrethrins, dispersed in an ointment base of wool-fat, petrolatum and paraffin, it is an efficient remedy for scabies. Recently, pyrethrum extract incorporated in vanishing creams has found use as a mosquito repellent in Asian countries.
Pyrethrum has been used for protection of dried fish and fish meal against flies. It has also been used in tomato-canning industry against fruit flies and in mushroom houses for control of insect pests of common mushroom.
Medicinal Action and Uses:
Anti-spasmodic, diuretic, tonic. Ox-Eye Daisy has been successfully employed in whooping-cough, asthma and nervous excitability.
As a tonic, it acts similarly to Chamomile flowers, and has been recommended for night sweats. The flowers are balsamic and make a useful infusion for relieving chronic coughs and for bronchial catarrhs. Boiled with the leaves and stalks and sweetened with honey, they make an excellent drink for the same purpose.
In America, the root is also employed successfully for checking the night-sweats of pulmonary consumption, the fluid extract being taken, 15 to 60 drops in water.
Externally, it is serviceable as a lotion for wounds, bruises, ulcers and some cutaneous diseases.
Country people used formerly to take a decoction of the fresh herb in ale for the cure of jaundice.
6. Curcuma Longa:
A perennial herb with a permanent, irregularly rounded or ovate root-stock, which gives off lateral, elongated, cylindrical branches, wrinkled externally, often swelling into fusiform tubercles and emitting numerous roots, when mature brownish externally, deep yellow or orange on section.
Leaves all radical, convolute in vernation, when full grown over three feet long, including the long, rather slender petioles which sheath at the base, obovate-lanceolate or -oval, very acute at the apex, gradually attenuated into the petiole, entire, smooth, thin, bright uniform green; midrib very strong and prominent beneath; the lateral nerves slender, close, nearly straight, coming off the midrib at a very acute angle.
Flowering stems from the centre of the tuft of leaves, and appearing before the latter are full grown, about a foot high including the inflorescence which occupies about half its length, cylindrical, stout, solid, pale green, with a few pale sheathing bracts, the upper one larger and somewhat leafy.
Flowers sessile, usually in pairs, in the axils of large, concave, spreading bracts, and exceeding them, imbricated in a rather dense spike; the lower bracts ovate, blunt, saccade at the base, pale green, sometimes tinged with purplish red; the upper ones empty, forming a terminal tuft (coma), narrower, undulated, white tinged with bright pink (brighter before the inflorescence has expanded), each flower provided with 2 small, ovate, scaly bracts at the base.
Calyx superior, very short, funnel-shaped, bluntly 3-lobed, membranous, gamosepalous, yellowish. Corolla gamopetalous, consisting of an infundibuliform tube more than twice the length of the calyx, and three ovate-lanceolate, acute, erect, rigid, orange-coloured segments, about as long as the tube, the posterior slightly hooded, rather larger than the two lateral ones, which are approximated in front.
Androecium of 6 portions in two rows ; the three outer petaloid, bright yellow (often described as an inner series of corolla-segments) arising from the summit of the tube of the corolla, the two lateral equal, obovate-oblong, bifid or lobed at the end, overlapping “the anterior one, which forms the lip of the flower, and is rounded, deeply bifid, and spreading; the three inner not petaloid, the two lateral reduced to two small filiform staminodes inserted at the very base of the corolla-tube, the posterior one antheriferous, with a broad filament inserted on the corolla-tube between the two lateral staminodes of the outer row and opposite and at the base of the posterior corolla-segment.
Anther distinctly two-celled, oblong, tailed at the base, minutely hairy outside, antrorse, connective prolonged into a short beak curved over above the anther. Ovary inferior, globose, 3-celled, with numerous ovules in several rows; style very long, slender, the upper part passing between the lobes of the anther and concealed by them; stigma capitate, standing immediately above the anther and beneath the process of the connective.
Fruit not seen of the genus, a dry 3-celled capsule, loculicidally 3-valved, with numerous seeds; the seeds roundish, with a short arillus and a small straight embryo, with the radicle exserted beyond the radiated endosperm.
Medicinal Action and Uses:
Turmeric is a mild aromatic stimulant seldom used in medicine except as a colouring. It was once a cure for jaundice. Its chief use is in the manufacture of curry powders. It is also used as an adulterant of mustard and a substitute for it and forms one of the ingredients of many cattle condiments.
Tincture of turmeric is used as a colouring agent, but the odour is fugitive. It dyes a rich yellow. Turmeric paper is prepared by soaking unglazed white paper in the tincture and then drying. Used as a test for alkaloids and boric acid.
7. Dhattura:
An erect, succulent, spreading annual herb or shrub, a meter or more in height with divaricate often purplish branches, leaves triangular ovate in outline, unequal at base, flowers large solitary, short pedicelled, purplish outside and white inside. Fruits subglobose, capsules covered all over with numerous fleshy prickles, irregularly breaking when mature, seeds numerous, smooth yellowish brown.
Two types of plants of D. metel var. fastuosa have been reported, viz., one with a single whorl of corolla, ‘single’ and the other with two or three whorls of corolla ‘double’. Both have simple, exstipulate, alternate and petiolate leaves, 6-10 cm long and 4-7 cm broad; petiole, 4-6 cm long, cylindrical with an anterior longitudinal shallow groove; lamina simple, ovate, base asymmetrical, apex acute, upper surface deep green, lower slightly pale, margin entire or more or less straight, occasionally coarsely toothed.
A continuous sub-marginal vein (from base to apex) joins the lateral veins forming prominent outwardly curved arches (less curved in ‘double’). In transectional view leaves of both the types are dorsiventral consisting of adaxial and abaxial epidermis, a single layered palisade and 3- 4 layered spongy parenchyma. Adaxial epidermal cell walls in surface view are almost entire; stomata usually anisocytic, rarely anomocytic.
Abaxial epidermal cells walls are much wavy and stomata mostly anisocytic, occasionally anomocytic. Trichomes are glandular and also non-glandular; non-glandular hairs un-branched, long, mostly multicellular (2-4 celled), a few unicellular with attenuated end, short stalked, thick walled, mostly with warty surface; glandular hairs short stalked, with multicellular globose heads containing a somewhat gummy substance. Spongy parenchyma is characterised by the presence of a crystalliferous layer distinct below the palisade tissue due to presence of prismatic (and a few rosette) crystals in the adaxial most layer of spongy parenchyma.
Midrib shows cuticularised epidermis; 3-4 layered collenchyma; cortical cells large, hexagonal to round without any content excepting prismatic and rhomboid crystals; a single layered sclerenchymatous cambium; single layered endodermis containing starch grains and pericycle. Starch grains are both, simple and compound; simple grains mostly eccentric, a few bi-centric.
The middle part of the petiole in T.S. reveals almost the same structures as in the midrib; vascular elements are in an incomplete cylinder consisting of 12-13 bi-collateral bundles; pith parenchymatous with scattered rosette and other types of crystals. Chloroplast grains are sparce in pericycle, cortex and epidermis. Crystals cubic, tetragonal, rod-shaped, isolated or in groups, present mainly in cortical zone of midrib.
Leaf Powder:
It shows sparcely distributed fibres; xylem vessels numerous, with spiral thickening, perforation plate simple and terminal, sometime sub-terminal; annular thickened vessels occasional; sclereids rare; crystals (rosette, acicular, tetragonal and cubic) abundant, distributed all through the mesophyll cells; starch grains scattered, small, simple or compound, eccentric or bi-centric; laminar fragments with stomata and epidermal cells common; glandular and non-glandular multicellular trichomes.
Medicinal Action and Uses:
The plant is acrid, narcotic, anodyne, anti-spasmodic, intoxicant and emetic. It is useful in asthma, cough, fever, inflammations, oedema, neuralgia, insanity, myalgia, hyperacidity, duodenal ulcer, renal colic, calculi and dysmenorrhoea. Roots are used for bites of rabid dogs. Leaf is useful in inflammations and piles. Leaf juice is applied externally for lice and in skin diseases.
Leaves the in form of poultice are used in lumbago, sciatica, neuralgia, mumps, painful swellings. Seeds are aphrodisiac and used in toothache, earache, gastric disorders and are good to treat dandruff and lice.
8. Hemidesmus Indicus:
A twining shrub with numerous very slender, woody, diffuse, smooth stems, and a slender, slightly branched, tortuous root; branches much elongated, whip-like, simple, smooth. Leaves opposite, very shortly stalked, dark-green, smooth, shining, variable in form, ovate, oval, oblong, lanceolate or almost linear, usually broadest on the upper branches, acute at the apex, margin entire; stipules very small, caducous.
Flowers small, in little clusters of 5 or 6 in the axils of the leaves, shortly stalked, the pedicel with several imbricated, acute, ovate, minutely laciniated bracts, Calyx very deeply divided into 5 ovate, acute segments with a strong midrib, finely ciliated, imbricate. Corolla rotate, very deeply 5-cleft, the segments ovate, acute, valvate, texture leathery, deep purple and wrinkled within, green outside, the short tube with a prominent laterally compressed rounded ridge alternating with the segments.
Stamens 5, inserted at the very base of the corolla-tube immediately behind the prominent ridges; filaments long, slender, free for their whole length, connectives wide, prolonged beyond the anthers into triangular inflexed appendages, which are united by their margins to form a horizontal cover to the stigma; anther-cells small, in contact with but free from the stigma, smooth; pollen collected into masses, 2 in each cell, and becoming attached in fours to the dilated apex of each angle of the stigma.
Ovaries 2, small, compressed; styles united to form a short, thick, tapering body; stigma large, thick, capitate, bluntly pentagonous, smooth, the top slightly raised in the centre.
Fruit of 2 widely divaricated follicles, about 4 inches long, straight, linear, tapering, smooth, dehiscing along the ventral suture. Seeds numerous, overlapping, elongated, brownish-black, provided with a long tuft of white hairs at the hilum; embryo straight, in scanty endosperm.
Medical Properties and Uses:
In India it is regarded as possessing similar properties to sarsaparilla, and is employed as a substitute for that substance, as an alternative, tonic, diuretic, and diaphoretic. Waring, in the Pharmacopoeia of India, speaks highly of its value, more especially of that of the fresh root; but in this country and in the United States of America it is but little esteemed.
9. Hibiscus Esculentus:
A large annual herb, reaching 5 or 6 feet in height, stem thick and occasionally somewhat ligneous at the base, erect, stiff, cylindrical, rough with long spreading hairs, sparingly branched, the branches short, readily disarticulating from the stem. Leaves numerous, spreading, alternate, on very long hispid petioles, stipules linear-subulate, hairy, deciduous, blade large, variable in size, often reaching 8 inches or more in length, palmately veined, and more or less deeply cut into 3 or 5 acute lobes or segments which are broad and shallow in the lower ones and deep and narrow in the upper, cordate or rounded at the base, coarsely dentate-serrate, rough with short hairs on both surfaces, pale green.
Flowers large, often reaching 4 inches in diameter, solitary in the leaf-axils, on short, thick, hispid peduncles much dilated at the summit; epicalyx of 8—12 linear, acute, erect, strongly hairy bracts which are quickly caducous, buds conical, apiculate. Calyx pale green, soft, densely covered with short hairs, splitting completely down one side at the expansion of the flower and then having the appearance of a small spathe, soon separating by a circular Fission from the receptacle and falling away.
Petals 5, large, strongly convolute in the bud, much overlapping, slightly connected at the base, delicate in texture, pale yellow, with a purple base within. Stamens numerous, the filaments combined into a short tube and adherent to the petals at the base; anthers covering the upper portion of the tube, crowded, 1-celled, yellow. Ovary ovate, conical, strongly hairy, 4 or 5-celled, style passing through the staminal tube, stigma capitate, large, deeply 4 or 5- lobed, bright crimson.
Fruit a capsule, varying in length from 3— 10 inches, narrowly oblong or fusiform, tapering to the blunt point, cylindrical, with 4 to 10 blunt angles, rough with short scattered hairs, pericarp dry, chartaceous, yellowish, dehiscing loculicidally into 8—10 valves, 4—5, or 8—10-celled, with thin dissepiments and a single row of seeds in each cell. Seeds as large as peas, nearly round, testa smooth, brown, thin, embryo curved, cotyledons not folded, radicle inferior, no endosperm.
Medical Properties and Uses:
Hibiscus capsules possess valuable emollient and demulcent properties; and are also said to be diuretic. Hence, in the form of a decoction they may be employed in all cases where demulcent and emollient remedies are found useful, as in catarrhal affections, gonorrhoea, dysuria, &c. Waring states “that the inhalation of the vapour of the hot decoction has been found very serviceable in allaying cough, hoarseness, irritation of the glottis, and other affections of the throat and fauces.”
The bruised fresh unripe capsules also form an efficient emollient poultice. The leaves may likewise be used to form an emollient poultice; and the root will probably be found an efficient substitute for that of the marshmallow plant (Althaa officinalis).
The principal use of the fruits, however, is not as a medicine, but as a food substance. Thus, on account of the abundance of mucilage they contain, they are “largely employed in tropical countries for thickening soups, &c.; and in Western Africa, &c., in various ways in the preparation of native dishes. The young fruits are also sometimes pickled like capers.
10. Indigofera Tinctoria:
A small shrub, 4—6 feet high, with slender, spreading, rather angular branches, rough with short depressed white hairs. Leaves alternate, 3 or 4 inches long, shortly stalked, unequally pinnate, with small, setaceous stipules, rachis stiff, tapering, hairy; leaflets in 4 to 6 opposite pairs and an odd one, very shortly stalked, each with a minute stipella at the base, oval, or obovate-oblong, entire, ½ — ¾ inch long, glabrous and blueish green above, silky with white depressed hairs and paler beneath.
Flowers small, shortly stalked, rather closely arranged in erect, tapering spicate stalked racemes from the axils of the leaves and shorter than them, rachis silky, bracts subulate. Calyx sub-bilabiate, when in full flower almost flat, silky externally, cut into 5 nearly equal triangular teeth, the two upper erect. Petals papilionaceous, the standard oval, obtuse, erect, greenish, wings oblong-spathulate, pink, keel petals about as long as the wings, united except the long claws, with a backward spur on the sides, pinkish with green veins.
Stamens 10, the upper one distinct, the others united into a sheath. Ovary sessile, linear, downy, stigma capitate. Pod linear, 1 — 1½ inch long, cylindrical, slightly falcate, apiculate, drooping, somewhat constricted between the seeds, smooth or slightly pubescent, dark brown, 2-valved, with several (8—12) seeds separated by partitions.
Seed somewhat quadrangular with truncate ends, smooth, dark brown, embryo with flat cotyledons and an accumbent radicle, in the axis of rather scanty endosperm which lies especially over its sides.
Indigo has been introduced into the British and Indian Pharmacopoeias solely for the preparation of a solution of Sulphate of Indigo, which is employed as a test for free chlorine in liquor sodae chloratae and hydrochloric acid, as the colour of the solution is destroyed by free chlorine.
Indigo has been used as a remedial agent in epilepsy, and also in infantile convulsions, chorea, hysteria, and amenorrhoea. It appears to act as an irritant to the alimentary mucous membrane; and under its influence the urine becomes green or bluish-green. It has now nearly, or entirely, gone out of use, for when given in sufficient doses to produce a desirable effect it is said to cause the most distressing nausea. It seems, however, a remedy worthy of some further trials. Indigo is in certain cases found in the urine in disease.
11. Mucuna Pruriens:
A large half-woody twiner, with long slender cylindrical branches, at first covered with short reflexed hairs, afterwards nearly smooth. Leaves alternate, pinnately trifoliolate, on hairy petioles 6—12 inches long, stipules small, lanceolate; leaflets on short, thick, hairy stalks, with setaceous stipellae at their base, 6—8 inches long, the terminal one the smallest, rhomboid-ovate, the lateral ones broadly ovate, very unequal at the base, the lower side being much expanded, all acute or acuminate, entire, membranous, green on both surfaces, nearly smooth above, covered below with adpressed white hairs, especially abundant on the prominent veins.
Flowers large, shortly stalked, in clusters of two or three together, in a pendulous, long-stalked, axillary raceme a foot or more in length, rachis and pedicels pilose, bracts Vi an inch long, lanceolate, densely hairy, falling before the flowering period. Calyx cup-shaped, silky externally, deeply cleft in a somewhat two-lipped manner, the two upper segments being perfectly united to form a single triangular one, and the lower three lanceolate, subulate, the middle one the longest.
Corolla papilionaceous, standard broadly oval, acute, about ¾ inch long, with a short claw, pale purplish, wings nearly 1½ inch long, narrow, oblong, blunt, slightly falcate, dull dark purple tinged with pale yellowish-green. Keel-petals narrow, a little longer than the wings, nearly straight, except at the end, where they become hard and cartilaginous, and curve upwards, forming a prominent, stiff, greenish beak. Stamens 10, 9 combined by their filaments, the upper one distinct, fore part of the filaments somewhat dilated, anthers small, soon falling, oblong.
Ovary surrounded at the base by a small crenulate disk, shortly stalked, hairy, tapering into the long slender style, stigma small, terminal. Legume nearly sessile, about 3 inches long by more than ½ inch broad, falcately curved at each end, somewhat compressed, slightly contracted between the seeds, dark brown, very densely covered with a thick felt of stiff, short, sharp, pale reddish hairs, which point backwards and are readily detached; when young the pods have a strongly marked rib down each valve, which is concealed by the hairs.
Seeds 4 or 5, separated by cellular partitions, about ¼ of an inch long, ovoid, somewhat compressed, smooth, brownish, mottled with black, hilum large, oblong.
Medical Properties and Uses:
Mucuna is a mechanical anthelmintic; that is, the hairs when given medicinally pierce the bodies of intestinal worms and by thus causing them to writhe, they become detached from the walls of the intestines. That their action is thus mechanical is proved by the fact that neither the administration of the tincture, decoction, or any corresponding preparation of mucuna, is in any degree anthelmintic.
Cowhage has little or no effect upon the tape-worm, but has been more especially employed with success for the expulsion of the large round worm (Ascaris lumbricoides), and to some extent also, for that of the small thread- worm (Oxyuras vermicularis). The best mode of administering cowhage is in the form of an electuary with treacle, syrup, or honey.
The legumes should be dipped in the vehicle, and then scraped until the mass has the consistence of an electuary, or of thick honey; and of this mixture a tablespoonful may be given to an adult, and a teaspoonful to a child, for three or four successive mornings.
This should be followed by a brisk purgative, which will in general bring away the worms. Mucuna is, however, but little used at the present day, although its efficiency is undoubted. It is, moreover, generally a safe remedy, but severe enteritis has sometimes followed its administration. Mucuna has also been used externally in the form of an ointment.