This section is from the book "Materia Medica And Therapeutics: An Introduction to the National Treatment of Disease", by John Mitchell Bruce. Also available from Amazon: The pharmacology and therapeutics of the materia medica.
The pulp obtained from the pods of the Purging Cassia, Cassia Fistula. Imported from the East Indies, or recently extracted from pods imported from the East or West Indies.
Characters of the pods. - Cylindrical, a foot or more in length, slightly curved, woody, indehiscent, black, rounded, divided by septa into cells, each containing a seed and viscid pulp. Of the pulp: blackish-brown, viscid, sweetish disagreeable taste, and somewhat sickly in odour, usually containing the seeds and dissepiments.
Composition. - Cassia pulp contains sugar, pectin, mucilage, and a purgative principle supposed to be allied to cathartic acid. See Senna.
Cassia Pulp is contained in Confectio Sennae, about 1 in 8.
Cassia pulp is a laxative, given only as an ingredient of Confectio Sennae.
 
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