882 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS.
A large, climbing, softly pubescent, or glabrous herb. Stem stout, quadrangular, winged, compressed or rarely round, and milky juice. Leaves 2-5in., ovate or oblong, not acuminate, base cordate or obtuse. Petiole l-2in. Peduncles l-4in., bracts lin., oblong, caducous, often pinkish. Pedicles i-lin. Cymes many-fid. Sepals |in., usually softly pubescent ; in fruit lin., orbicular or ovate, concave, scarious or sub-succulent. Corolla white, largish, soon twisting. Capsule f-fin. diam., globose, normally 4-seeded. Seeds smooth, black, one in each cell.
Uses : — Sanskrit writers describe two varieties, viz., Sweta or white, and Krishna or black. The white variety is preferred for medical use as a moderate mild cathartic. The black variety is said to be a powerful drastic and to cause vomiting, faintness and giddiness (Dutt).
Mahomedan physicians recognize two forms, a white and a black, and recommend that the black should be avoided on account of its poisonous properties.
The flowers are in Western India applied to the head in hemicrania (Dymock).
The turpeth root, notably the white variety of it, is quite equal to jalap and superior to rhubarb in its action, and prefer- able to both for having no nauseous smell or taste, and for being a very efficient and satisfactory purgative when used alone. Its dose is somewhat larger than that of jalap, but this is no disadvantage, as long as it is safe and free from nauseous taste and smell. The dose is larger only by 10 or 15 grains. As a cathartic and laxative, the turpeth root is useful in all the affections in which either jalap or rhubarb is indicated. The best way of administering it is in simple pow- der ; but it may also be employed in combination with cream of tartar in equal proportion, and with or without a few grains of ginger in each drachm of the compound powder. Dose of the simple powder is from fifty to seventy grains, and of the compound powder from a drachm to ninety grains (Moodeen Sheriff).
About two scruples of the root are rubbed into a pulp with
