drink and mouth-wash to allay thirst in cholera. According to Dymock, Mir Muhammad Husain states in the Makhzan, that the kind of plantain, called málbhok, is used as a poultice to burns, while that called bolkad is boiled and employed as an ointment for the syphilitic eruptions of children. He also notices the use of the ashes on account of their alkaline properties, and of the root as an anthelmintic. Ainslie writes, " The plantain is one of the most delicious of all the Indian fruits, and one of the safest for such as have delicate stomachs, being entirely free from acidity ; it is, moreover, very nourishing, and is always prescribed as food by the Hindu practitioners for such as suffer from bile and heat of habit."
The fruit has long been known and commented on by European writers. Perhaps the first authentic description is by Pliny, who quotes the name pala, a term which still exists in Malabar. He states that the Greeks of Alexander's expedition saw it in India, and that sages reposed beneath its shade and ate its fruit (hence the name " sapientum "). In the middle ages, it had some reputation as a medicine. Avicenna wrote that it engendered phlegm, and that it spoiled the stomach, but that it was good for heat in the stomach, lungs and kidneys, and provoked urine. Rhasis stated that the fruit was hurtful to the " maw ;" Serapio that it was in the end of the first degree warming, diuretic and aphrodisiac. Paludanus, the commentator and friend of Linschoten, confirms these statements, and, from personal observation, supports the remark that the fruit breeds " a heaviness in the maw." In modern times, it is employed medicinally by Europeans as an anti-scorbutic only, and as a mild, demulcent astringent diet in cases of dysentery, but several other less well-known properties are attributed to different parts of the plant in the following opinions : —
" The ripe fruit of the finer varieties of the plantain is useful in chronic dysentery and diarrhoea. The dried fruit of the larger varieties is a valuable antiscorbutic. In North Bengal, the dried leaves, and in fact the entire plant, is burnt, and the ashes, dissolved in water and strained, yield an alkaline
