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 ...