CROTON OIL(Crotonis Oleum) is prepared from the seeds of Croton Tiglium, a euplrorbiaceous tree indigenous to the Malabar coast and Tavoy, and grown in many parts of the East Indies. The tree is from 15 to 20 feet in height, and has few and spreading branches; alternate, oval-oblong leaves, acuminate at the point, and covered when young with stellate hairs, and small, downy, greenish-yellow, monoecious flowers. The male blossoms have five petals and fifteen stamens; the females are apetalous, but bear three bifid styles. The fruit or capsule is obtusely three-cornered, and ¾ths of an inch long; it consists of three carpels each inclosing a seed. The seeds resemble those of the castor-oil plant; they are about half an inch long, and ∣ths of an inch broad, and have a cinnamon-brown, brittle integument; between the two halves of the kernel lie the large cotyledons and radicle. The kernels contain from 50 to 60 per cent, of oil, which is obtained by pressing them, when bruised to a pulp, between hot plates. Croton oil is a transparent and viscid liquid of a brownish or pale-yellow tinge, an acrid, peculiar, and persistent taste, a disagreeable odour, and acid reaction. It is soluble in volatile oils, carbon disulphide, and ether, and to some extent in alcohol. It contains acetic, butyric, and valeric acids, with glycerides of acids of the same series, and a volatile body, C 5 H 8 O 2 , metameric with angelic acid, termed by Geuther and Fröhlich tiglic acid, and considered by them as possibly identical with Frankland and Duppa’s methylcrotonic acid, C(C 2 H 4 ) ,, CH 8 .CO.OH. According to the chemists before-mentioned the crotonic acid of Schlippe, C 4 H 6 O 2 , is not present in croton-oil. To what the oil owes its medicinal properties has not yet been certainly ...

CROTONA, or CROTON, now Cotrone, a celebrated city of Magna Graecia, at the mouth of the small river AEsarus, in the country of the Bruttii, on the western shore of the Ionian Sea. It was founded in the year 710 b.c. by a colony of Achaeans under the command of Myscellus, in accordance with a decree of the oracle at Delphi. The first well-established fact in its history is its friendship with Sybaris; and till the arrival of Pythagoras the two cities continued advancing in material prosperity and cultivating the arts of war and peace with much success. The Crotoniats regarded Hercules as their tutelary divinity, and were renowned for their skill in all athletic exercises; the Sybarites were distinguished by luxury and effeminacy. The government of Crotona, oligarchical in form, had hitherto been confined to the council of 1000, who traced their descent from the Achaean founders of the city. But a secret society of 300 of the disciples of Pythagoras contrived to guide and even overawe the supreme council, till the people, who were excluded from all share in the government, expelled the Pythagoreans from the city, and established a democracy. Before this revolution, however, the Grotoniats, under the command of the celebrated athlete Milo, had marched against Sybaris, and, though opposed by an army three times their own in number, had taken it and levelled it with the ground. This event is usually dated 510 b.c. Before thirty years had elapsed, the Crotoniats themselves sustained a still more disgraceful defeat from the united forces of the Locrians and Rheggians, which, however, was not attended with such disastrous consequences to their city. During the Athenian invasion of Sicily, Crotona remained neutral; it supplied the Athenians with provisions, but refused to allow ...