A New Supplement...: Gambogia

A New Supplement to the latest Pharmacopoeias of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris, Forming A Complete Dispendatory, Conspectus, and Dictionary of Medical Chemistry, Giving All the Old and New Names, Including the New French and American Medicines, and Poisons; with Symptoms, Treatment, and Tests; as Well As Herbs, Drugs, Compounds, Veterinary Drugs, With the Pharmacopoia of the Vetenary College, Nostrums, Patent Medicines, Perfumery, Paints, Varnishes, And similar articles kept in the Shops; With Their Compositions, Imitations, Adulterations, And Medicinal Uses, Being a General Book of Formulæ and Recipes For Daily Reference in the Laboratory and at the Counter.
Fourth edition, corrected, improved, and very much enlarged.
By James Rennie, M. A., Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Foreign Medicine; the Pharmacopeia Universalis; Author of a Conspectus of Prescriptions in Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery; the Pharmacopeia Imperialis, &c. &c.
London: Baldwin and Cradock. 1837.
London: Thomas Curson Hansard, Paternoster Row.


CAMBOGIA. L. Gambogia. E. D. Gamboge, a gum resin produced from the Stalagmitis cambojioides, much like cherry-tree gum, almost tasteless, but acrid in the throat and fauces. It is brittle, opaque, and of a deep yellow, so as to be used as a pigment. Adulterated in the original preparation with inferior substances, and ought to be selected of a clear colour, and glassy fracture. Medicinally it is a drastic cathartic, and also emetic and vermifuge. It is used in dropsy, and for tape-worm, and in obstinato costiveness, and hydrocephalus. The dose is gr. ij to gr. vj of the powder, combined with chloride of mercury, jalap, aloes and other cathartics. For anasarca it is best to combine it with a solution of bicarbonate of potass. Poisonous, producing great heat and dryness of the mouth and throat, hypercarharsis and death. Cases often occur from taqking Morison's pills, the basis of which is gamboge. Treatment. Give enemata and copious draughts of barley water, and other bland fluids.