Papers on the plant Gynocardia odorata from which the Chaulmoogra oil is obtained / compiled from various sources by Richard C. Lepage.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on the plant Gynocardia odorata from which the Chaulmoogra oil is obtained / compiled from various sources by Richard C. Lepage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    dark brown oily nucleus. They have a faint, peculiar, somewhat unpleasant taste and odour. These seeds have not been submitted to any complete chemical examination, but they yield by expression a fixed oil which possesses in a marked degree their taste and odour, and in which their ])roperties appear essentially to reside. This oil, as sold in the bazaars of India, is commonly very impure, and the means of detecting these impurities, hitherto ^ ery difficult, has recently been the subject of careful inves- tigation by Dr. Dymock. When pure, the oil is described as clear, of a pale sherry colour, with the odour of chaul- moogra, and a sp. gr. of 0.900. By keeping it throws down a granular white fatty deposit. The oil obtained by Dymock by boiling the powdered seeds in water was of a golden sherry colour, fluid consistence, strong odour of chaulmoogra, and formed no deposit. It would appear from Dymock's experiments that genuine chaulmoogra oil shows two marked peculiarities when acted upon by sulphuric acid ; thus twenty minims were placed in a watchglass and one minim of strong suljihuric acid, B.P., added, and on stirring with a glass rod, the oil, whether drawn cold or by means of heat, gave first a burnt sienna, and afterwards a rich olive-green colour. If drawn cold, a tenacious reddish brown resinous mass, which could not be mixed with the rest of the oil, was found to form round the drop of acid ; but in the case of the oil ex- tracted by boiling, no tenacious resinlike mass was fonued under similar treatment with sulphuric acid. Medical Properties and Uses.—Chaulmoogra seeds are alterative tonic in moderate doses, and emetic in large doses. They have been employed Avith Ijenefit in the form of a pill given three or four times a day, in doses of about six grains, gradually increased until they cause nausea, in scrofula, skin diseases, rheumatism, and leprosy. The oil is also given in doses of five or six di-ops, gradually increased in
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