The following was said by Major Kirtikar at the Melbourne Medical Congress, in exhibiting an extract from the bark
prepared by the late Mr. M. C, Periera of Bandra : — About 30-40 grains a day, in small doses, are given every third or fourth hour in Intermittent Fevers. The fruit pulp is acid and makes a very pleasant refrigerent drink. When unripe, the fruit pulp is mucilaginous, but as it gets ripe, it assumes the appearance of dry pith, containing dry, powdery, acid, starch- like stuff, enclosed in bundles of fibre and surrounding the seeds. Walz has extracted an active principle from the Bark, called Adansonin. The pulp is an astringent in diarrhœa, like gallic acid.
Parts used : — The fruit, bark and leaves.
Use : — It was introduced into India by the Arabians. In Africa, it is used for dysentery, and the leaves are made into poultices and used as a fomentation to painful swellings, or the leaves dried and reduced to powder are called lalo by the Africans, and are used to check excessive perspiration. (Royle.) Duchassing recommends the bark as an antiperiodic in fever. In Bombay, the pulp, mixed with butter-milk, is used as an astringent in diarrhœa and dysentery. In the Concan, the pulp with figs is given in asthma, and a sherbet made of it, with the addition of cumin and sugar, is administered in bilious dyspepsia. It is also given for this affection with Emblic myrobalans, fresh mint, rock-salt, and long pepper. (Dymock.)
The fruit has been analysed by Messrs. Heckel and Schlagdenhauffen. The authors think that the pulp is rightly used by the natives as a remedy in dysentery.
The pulp is beneficial in pyrexia of any form of fever, by diminishing the heat and quenching thirst. It has recently proved itself very successful in relieving the night-sweats and febrile flushes in a severe case of consumption. The bark is useful to some extent in simple and in complicated cases of continued and intermittent fevers (Moodeen Sheriff.)
