Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medical and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bentley and Theophilus Redwood ; with an appendix.

  • Jonathan Pereira
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medical and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bentley and Theophilus Redwood ; with an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1099/1180 (page 1067)
    APPENDIX. PALMACEiE, Lindley. The Palm Order, AXtECA CATECHU, Linn, The Catechu or Betel Nut Palm. Botanical Character.—A handsome tree, with a slender and grace- ful straight stem, from 40 to 50 feet high, and about 20 inches in circumference. Leaves pinnated. Flowers unisexual, on a branched spadix, and enclosed in an erect double spathe. Males: Perianth 6-parted. Females: Perianth 6-parted ,* stamens 6, rudi- mentary ; ovary, superior, 1-celled. Fruit drupaceous, about the size of a small hen's egg, smooth, yellow, and witli a thick fibrous rind. Seed solitary, with ruminate albumen. Habitat.—Abundant in Sumatra, Ceylon, and Malabar, and culti- vated generally in all the warmer parts of Asia. It begins to bear fruit at the age of five or six years, and continues to produce until it arrives at the age of twenty-five or thirty years. A tree will yield, according to circumstances, from two to eight hundred fruits during the season. [§ Areca. Areea Nut The seed of Areca Catechu, Linn , the Betel Nut tree. Imported from the East Indies.] General Characters.—The Betel or Areca Nut (the Pinang of the Malays) is about the size of a nutmeg, roundish-conical, flat- tened at the base, hard, horny, reddish-brown externally, and inter- nally brown with whitish veins. It is inodorous, but has an astrin- gent taste. The principal part of the seed is the ruminate albumen, at the base of which is the embryo. Chemical Characters.—According to Morin, areca nuts con- tain a large proportion of tannic and gallic acids, and also gluten, red insoluble matter, fixed oil, gum, oxalate of lime, and lignin. jjses _In conjunction with unslaked lime (chunam) and the [3 T}