Volume 2

Medical botany : containing systematic and general descriptions, with [310] plates of all the medicinal plants, indigenous and exotic ... / [By Sir William Jackson Hooker and ... G. Spratt, Esq. ...].

  • Woodville, William, 1752-1805.
Date:
1810-1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical botany : containing systematic and general descriptions, with [310] plates of all the medicinal plants, indigenous and exotic ... / [By Sir William Jackson Hooker and ... G. Spratt, Esq. ...]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    12/348 (page 190)
    ISO ORB. XL Cucurbiiacem. cucumis colocynthis. i divided at the brim into five tapering segments: the corolla is ’monopetalous, bell-shaped, and divided at the limb into five pointed segments: the filaments are three, two of which are bifid at the apex; they are all very short, and inserted into the calyx: the an therm are linear, long, erect, and adhere together on the outer side: the calyx and corolla of the female flower are similar to those of the male: the three filaments are without an therm: the germen is large: the style cylindrical, very short, furnished with three stigmata, which are thick, gibbous/bifid, and bent outwardly: the fruit is a round apple, of the size of an orange, divided into three cells, abounding with a pulpy matter, separated every where by cellular membrane, and including many ovate compressed seeds. The flowers appear from May till August. Colocynth is imported for use to this part of Europe from Turkey, but it is yet unknown here of what place this plant is a native. It seems to have been cultivated in Britain in the time of Turner, and the figure we have given was drawn from a specimen of the plant produced by sewing the seed in a hot bed. Though the plants thus raised put forth flowers readily, they are very rarely known to bear fruit. The spongy membranous medullary part of the fruit is di- rected for medicinal use: this, “ which to the taste is nauseous, acrid, and intensely bitter, on being boiled in water, renders a large quan- tity of the liquor ropy and slimy: even a tincture of it made in proof spirit is so glutinous as not to pass through a filter, and not easily through a common strainer. The watery decoctions inspissated, yield a large proportion, half of the weight of the colocynth, or more, of a mucilaginous extract; which purges strongly, but with much less irritation, and greater safet]^, than the colocynth itself, and appears to be the best preparation obtainable from this drastic drug.”1 This very powerful and irritating cathartic is the KoAoxm>&* of the Ancient Greeks, and the Alhandal of the Arabians. It was fre- quently employed by both in different diseases, though not without * Lewis5 M. M. p. 21G. ,