VOL. I.] THE VETERINARY RECORD, &c. OCTOBER 1845. [No. 4. ON THE USE OF THE CHIOCOCCA RACEMOSA, THE By RICARDO DE GUMBLETON DAUNT, M.D. Edinburgh, and L.M. Rio de Janeiro. To the Editors of THE VETERINARY RECORD. Gentlemen,-ALTHOUGH entirely unacquainted with comparative pathology and therapeutics, yet the importance, in a politicoeconomical sense, of the multiplication and conservation of the domestic animals has caused me often to notice any thing peculiar respecting them wherever offering itself. In this way I became acquainted with the fact I now make known to you, in the belief that it will prove of use. During a residence, in the latter part of the past year, in the district of San John de Macahé in this empire, I found that the "Pustule Maligne," or "Charbon," was a frequent disease among the under-bred and poorly kept horses of that district, and that the peasantry combated it with general success by the internal administration of the shrub known here as the Caïnca, the "Chiococca Racemosa" of naturalists. Knowing the fatality of this disease among cattle in many European countries, and its fearfully contagious nature, it being most commonly fatal to those employed about such animals, it has appeared to me that the Caïnca (which may be procured in the European drug-market, and which, as the chiococca racemosa of the family of the Rubiaceæ, is described in the Histoire Naturelle Medicale of Professor Richard, and in the Materia Medica of Messrs. Merat and Delens) deserves a fair trial. I could not learn whether this drug was likewise applied to cases of this disease occurring in the human subject in this country. In giving it to animals, the dose must be apportioned in the first trials by an approximative relation founded on the statements given by the two French authors named of its dose for the human subject. That the caïnca possesses most powerful properties is not to be doubted, it being most popular among the natives in all cases where a general corruption of the circulating fluids exists, as in all diffuse cellular inflammations, &c.; and probably it might not be without action in equinia. It decidedly merits a more extended trial in Europe than the efforts of M. de Langsdorff obtained for it about sixteen years ago, when his attention was called to it during his travels in the interior of Brazil. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your most obedient servant. Campinas, Interior of the Province of San Paulo, Sir W. Hooker, in his Exotic Flora, tab. 93, says, "The Chiococcum racemosum is a moderate sized shrub, growing, according to Browne, in Jamaica, St. Domingo, and Barbadoes; also at Carthagena, and, according to Michaux and Pursh, in Georgia and Florida. It attains the height of seven or eight feet; is much branched, and the branches are opposite, round, smooth, and so slender as to require support. Leaves one or two inches long, ovate, tapering at each end, with a short footstalk; shining, subcoriaceous, waved and entire at their margins, with a distinct central rib, but very obscure lateral veins. "The flowers are produced from the axila of the upper leaves, in small but graceful drooping racemes: they are secund. The calyx of five brown erect teeth; the corolla infundibuliform, pale yellow; its tube somewhat angular, and the limb of five spreading ovate segments; stamens, five united at their bases, shorter than the corolla; anthers pale yellow; germen compressed, roundishovate, obscurely two-lobed, two-celled inferior. Style filiform, longer than the tube of the calyx. Stigma clavate, bifid. Berry snow-white, roundish, slightly compressed, pulpy, crowned with |