924 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS.
ben minutes in a pint of new milk. This should be strained slightly sweetened with lump sugar, and drunk warm. This quantity should be taken twice or three times a day, and is liked by the patients. There is no doubt of its efficacy as a curative in the earlier, and a palliative in the later stages of pulmonary consumption."
Again, in the B. M. J. for April 5, 1884 p. 664, he mentions the control of phthisical cough by smoking the dried leaves of the mullein plant in an ordinary tobacco pipe. •
Chemical composition. — Morin (Journ. Chin. Med. ii, p. 223) obtained from the flowers a yellow volatile oil, a fatty acid, free malic and phosphoric acids, malate and phosphate of lime, acetate of potash, uncrystallizable sugar, gum, chlorophyll, and a yellow resinous colouring matter.
Adolph Latin submitted the leaves to proximate analysis and found the constituents to be 0*80 per cent, of a crystalline wax, a trace of volatile oil, 078 per cent, of resin soluble in ether, 1*00 per cent, of resin insoluble in ether, but soluble in absolute alcohol, a small quantity of tannin, a bitter principle, sugar, mucilage, &c. The moisture in the air-dried sample amounted to 5*90 per cent., and the ash to 12*60 per cent. He concludes that the plant contains many of the usual constituents, and a bitter principle which may be prepared by exhausting the drug with alcohol, dissolving the alcoholic extract in water and agitating with ether or chloroform. Several trials failed to secure this substance in a crystalline condition. It was found to be soluble in water, ether, alcohol, and chloroform, and to possess a decidedly bitter taste. It responded to none of the tests for a glucoside or alkaloid. (Am. Journ. Pharm., Feb. 1890. E. L. Janson (1890) found that petroleum ether and stronger ether used successively, extracted from the flowers about per cent, in each case. A decided change in the colour of the drug was noticed after the extraction with ether, which removed the yellow colour, leaving the residue of a dark green. The yellow colouring matter was either a part of, or else it was retained by the resin dissolved by ether, and it was not found possible to separate it in the pure state. The drug after exhaustion with ether yielded 10 - 06 per cent, to absolute alcohol. A considerable portion of this alcoholic extract was soluble in water acidified with hydrochloric acid. When agitated with petroleum ether the acid solution yielded some colour to it, and this latter solvent on evaporation left a greenish-brown crystalline mass of a strong disagreeable odour and a sweet taste, which proved to be an easily decomposable p;lucoside, Another crystalline extractive was obtained by making the above acid solution of the alcoholic extract alkaline and agitating with ether ; while chloroform subse- quently extracted a red-brown amorphous mass.
Both of these extractives reduced Fehling's solution, and many changes in colour were noticed, indicating that these substances take some part in the colouring matter of the flowers.
The drug was also found to contain 2*49 per cent, of mucilage, 11*76 per cent, of carbohydrate corresponding to dextrin, 5*48 per cent, of glucose, 1*29 per cent, of saccharose, 16*76 per cent, of moisture, 4*11 per cent, of ash, and 32*75 per cent, of cellulose and lignin. No reaction indicating tannin was
