Botany names

Description - The Alstonia scholaris is a tall evergreen tree with bitter milky juice and all glabrous except inflorascence. Rough, grey bark, whorled branches. Leaves 4-7 in a whorl, coriaceous, bluntly acuminate, dark green above and pale beneath. Greenish-white flowers in umbellately branched many flowered pubescent capitate cymes. Folicles 12-24 in long, cylindric, pendulous in clusters. Papillose seeds with brownish hair at each ends.

Chemical Constituents- Plant contains alkaloids. Root bark - Beta-sitosterol. Important alkaloids are - echitamine (stem and root bark), akuammicine (root bark), echitamidine (stem bark), tubotaiwine (stem and root bark), pseudo-akuammidine (leaves, root bark), picrinine (stem bark, leaves, flowers), picralinal (leaves), strictamine (flowers), nareline (leaves), ditamine (stem bark), echitenine (stem bark), an indole akialoid (flowers). Non alkaloidal constituents of the flowers are n-hexacosane, lupeolt Beta-amyrin, ursolic and palmitic acids. On steam distillation, flowers yield an essential oil. Leaves contain alkaloids scholaricine, condylocarpine, picralstonine, vallesamine, epischolaricine, methylischolarine, methylburnamine, lagulnamine, angustilobine-B-acid, losbanine, scholurine. Plant also contains picrinine, tubotainine, picraline, sreemaline.

Use - Bark bitter tonic, febrifuge, antihelmintic and galactogogue. Used in the liquid extract form for chronic diarrhoea, asthma, cardiac troubles. Leaves used in beriberi, dropsy and congested liver. Latex applied to sores, ulcers, tumours and rheumatic swellings. This drug is considered very efficacious in chronic diarrhoea and dysentery. It is useful in malarial fever and brings down the temperature gradually and without causing perspiration or exhaustion, which usually follow other medicines for malaria. Chhatim is useful also in skin diseases. The drug is reported to cause paralysing effect on the motor nerves and consequent fall in blood pressure