Habitat — Cultivated throughout India, and also very often apparently wild.
A scabrid climber. In the fields of Afghanistan, it trails along the ground extensively. Leaves 2½ by scarcely 2in. in the typical wild very scabrous form, larger in cultivated forms approaching C. vulgaris, ovate, middle segment compound pinnatifid. Petiole lin. Petals ¼in., obovate, light-yellow. Ovary villous. Eruit smooth, variegated, green and white globose, 2½-3in. diam.
Parts used. — The fruit and root.
Use. — Sanskrit writers describe the fruit as bitter, acrid, cathartic and useful in biliousness, constipation, fever and worms. They also mention the root as a useful cathartic in jaundice, ascites, enlargement of the abdominal viscera, urinary diseases, rheumatism, etc.
Mahomedan writers consider it to be a very drastic purgative, removing phlegm from all parts of the system, and direct the fruit, leaves and root to be used. The drug is prescribed when the bowels are obstinately costive from disease or lesion of the nervous centres, also in dropsy, jaundice, colic, worms, elephantiasis, &c. Its irritant action upon the uterus is noticed, and fumigation with it is said to be of use for bringing on the menstrual flow. The author of the Makhzan tells us that the seeds are purgative, and mentions their use for preserving the hair from turning grey (Dymock).
In the Concan, the fruit and root, with or without nux-vomica, is rubbed into a paste with water and applied to boils and pimples. In rheumatism, equal parts of the root and long pepper are given in pill. A paste of the root is applied to the enlarged abdomen of children (Dymock).
It is officinal in both Indian and British Pharmacopœias.
From experiments with coloeynthin obtained from Citrullus colocynthis, Messrs. Naylor and Chappel find that this substance is capable of hydrolysis, and that it yields, amongst other products, colocynthein, elaterin, and dextrose. They were also able to obtain coloeynthin in a crystalline form.
[Pharm. J. 1907 Vol. 79 pp. 117-118.]
The seeds of the wild colocynth are used for food in Sind and Baluchistan : the kernels arc roasted or boiled and eaten with dates. The seeds
