An introduction to the study of materia medica : being a short account of the more important crude drugs of vegetable and animal origin, designed for students of pharmacy and medicine / by Henry G. Greenish.

  • Henry G. Greenish
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of materia medica : being a short account of the more important crude drugs of vegetable and animal origin, designed for students of pharmacy and medicine / by Henry G. Greenish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    35/558 (page 9)
    Euros,na crenulata, Hook.—The leaves of this plant are also imported from the Cape of Good Hope, but in smaller quantity than either of the preceding varieties of the drug. They are rather broader than the long buchu, varying in out- line 'from lanceolate to oval-oblong. The margin is minutely serrate, and the apex is blunt but not recurved (as in B. betulina). In odour and taste they resemble the official leaves ; they yield about 1-6 per cent, of volatile oil, which has not yet been examined for diosphenol. Uses.—Buchu is regarded as possessing a tonic and diuretic action; it is used in inflammatory conditions of the urinary tract. JAB O RAND I LEAVES (Folia Jaborandi) Source &c.—The name jaborandi is applied in South America, especially in Brazil, to a number of plants belonging chiefly to the natural orders Piperaceae and Rutaceae. The official description in the British Pharmacopoeia limits the drug to the leaflets of a Brazilian shrub, Pilocarpus Jaborandi^ Holmes (N.O^ ifcitacece). Although the various jaborandis have long been used in South America, the sudorific and salivatory properties of the official drug were unknown in Europe till 1873, when the leaviis were sent from Pernambuco to Paris. The demand that quickly arose for the drug was so large that the supply of the Pernambuco leaves was soon exhausted, and other varieties of jaborandi were exported in their place. To a certain extent these conditions still obtain. The supply of the official leaves is limited, and other varieties of jaborandi are from time to time exported, either in the place of, or mixed with, the official variety. This being the case, the attention of the student should be carefully directed to the diagnostic characters of the official drug. The plant produces large, imparipinnate, compound leaves, wit] i from two to four pairs of leaflets. These are collected, dried, and exported chiefly from Pernambuco and Ceara. The drug, as it in rives in this country, consists principally of the leaflets mixed with the petioles and occasional small fruits. The leaflets alone are official, and they are described as and commonly