A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, Jr.

Horatio Curtis Wood Jr.

Date:: 1876

Credit: A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$three years old, before breakfast, dinner, and supper, for two days, followed by a brisk purge. Brayera, U. S., or Koosso, is the dried flowers and unripe fniit of Brayera anthehnintica, a tree, native of Abyssinia. They occur in compressed greenish-yellow clusters, of a fragrant balsamic odor and a taste which in a little while is acrid and disagreeable. Koosso contains a volatile oil, tannic acid, and a resin, Koossin or Taeniin, discovered by Pavesi. This is crystal- line, white or yellowish, slightly soluble in water, freely so in alcohol, and was shown by Dr. Bedall {Sydenham Year-Booh, 1868, p. 476) to be the active principle of the drug, which yields about three per cent, of it. Brayera is a most efficient remedy against the tapeworm, and even in large doses causes no greater inconvenience to the patient than some nausea, ab- dominal pain, and looseness of the bowels. It is generally not necessary to administer any purgative with it, and the worm is discharged dead with the last watery passages. A half-ounce of the powdered flowers is given sus- pended in water in the morning, with the usual precautions as to diet, or from twenty to forty grains of koossin, wrapped up in a wafer, may be sub- stituted for the crude drug. Care should be exercised in administering it to pregnant women, as it is stated to have produced abortion. SANTONIOA-SANTONIOA. U. S. Levant Wormseed consists of the unexpanded flowers and peduncles of Artemisia Contra, a composite of Asia Minor and other parts of the East. It consists of pale, greenish-brown, smooth heads of four or five tubular flowers, of very strong aromatic odor when rubbed, and a bitter disagreeable taste. It contains volatile oil, resinous matter, and a crystalline principle. Santonin (^Santomnum, U. S.), or Santoninic Acid, which occurs in color- less, pearly, four-sided, orthorhombic tables, soluble in from four thousand to five thousand parts of cold and two hundred and fifty parts of boiling water, freely soluble in alcohol and chloroform, moderately so in cold ether; insoluble, or nearly so, in glycerine. It has a neutral reaction, but unites with alkalies to form salts, and hence is freely soluble in alkaline solutions. When slowly heated, it sublimes, unchanged, at from 165° to 175° C. When rapidly heated, it is converted into a brownish-red oil, which becomes carmine-red upon the addition of caustic potash. On exposure to sunlight, or, more slowly, even in the ordinary daylight, the colorless crystals of san- tonin acquire a golden-yellow tint. K this change be a chemical and not a mechanical one, the alteration must be very slight, since, according to Krauss, the yellow crystals conduct themselves in their chemical relations precisely as do the colorless crystals, and are precipitated, by the addition of acid to their alkaline solutions, as colorless crystals. Physiological Action.—Santonin is said to have been first introduced into medical practice in 1830, by Dr. Alms, by whom and Dr. Kahler it was$