Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/620

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INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS.

obscure. Panicle 4-12 in., conical, erect, rachis stout and erectopatent filiform flexuous branches glabrous or scaberulous. Spikes slender, joints and pedicels about = the sessile spikelets. Sessile spikelets grey, green, yellow or purplish, 1/6-¼in., slightly curved, glabrous, callus obscurely bearded ; glumes I coriaceous, acute, 2-4-nerved ; II coriaceous, 1-nerved, margins hyaline, keel muricate ; III lanceolate, acuminate, 2-nerved, margins inflexed ciliolate ; 1V = III ciliate ; palea very small, obtuse, glabrous. Pedicelled spikelets like the sessile but glume I smooth, IV awnless. (Hooker).

Uses : — By Sanskrit writers the root is described as cooling, refrigerant, stomachic and useful in pyrexia, thirst, inflammation, irritability of stomach, etc. It enters into the composition of several cooling medicines. * * A weak infusion of the root is sometimes used as a febrifuge drink. Externally it is used in a variety of ways. A paste of the root is rubbed on the skin to relieve oppressive heat or burning of the body. This use of the drug appears to have been popular with the ancients. * * An aromatic cooling bath is prepared by adding to a tub of water the following substances in fine powder, namely, root of Andropogon muricatus, Pavonia odorata (bâlâ) red sandal wood, and a fragrant wood called padma kashtha. The same medicines are reduced to a thin emulsion with water and applied to the skin. (U. C. Dutt.)

An infusion of the root is given as a febrifuge and a powder in bilious complaints. It is regarded as stimulant, diaphoretic, stomachic and refrigerant. The essence (or otto) is used as a tonic. A paste of the pulverised roots in water is also used as a cooling external application in fevers.

Antispasmodic, diaphoretic, diuretic, and emmenagogue properties have been assigned to it ; but beyond being a gentle stimulant diaphoretic, it seems to have no just claims to notice as a medicine. An account of the uses to which it has been applied in Europe is given by Pereira {Mat. Med., Vol. ii., P., ii. p. 132) Its uses in native practice are detailed in the Taleef Shereef, p. 14, No. 47. According to the analysis of Geiger,

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