KÁMALÁ, a red powder used in medicine as an anthelminthic. It is obtained from Mallotus Philip-ρinensis, Müll., a large shrub or small tree from 20 to 45 feet in height, widely distributed in Asia, from southern Arabia in the west to North Australia and the Philippines in the east. The fruit of this species, as of many other Euphorbiaceous plants, is covered with stellate hairs, among which are intermixed ruby-coloured glands. These are found also on other parts of the plant, especially among the down with which the under surface of the leaf is covered. Kâmalâ is collected in many parts of India, and forms one of the lesser products of the Government forests in the Madras presidency at Naini Tai, where the Mallotus is found growing in immense quantities at the foot of the hills. According to Mr F. E. G. Matthews, numbers of people, chiefly women and children, are engaged in collecting the powder for exportation. A quantity of the berries is thrown into a large basket, and rubbed with the hand until the powder is removed and falls through the basket, as through a sieve, on a cloth spread below it to receive it....
The collection of kâmalâ begins in March, and lasts for about a month. The drug thus prepared contains, besides the glands, stellate hairs and fragments of leaves. Some samples, however, are occasionally met with in commerce containing as much as 60 per cent, of earthy matter, which is easily detected by its sinking when the kâmalâ is stirred up with water, or by the amount of ash left when the powder is incinerated. In India kâmalâ has long been known, since it has several ancient Sanskrit names, one of which, kapila, signifies dusky or tawny red. Under the name of wars, kanbil, or qinbil, kâmalâ appears to have been known to the Arabian physicians as a remedy for tapeworm and skin diseases as early as the 10th century, and indeed is mentioned by Paulus Aegineta in the 7th, but it did not attract any special attention in Europe as a medicine until experimented with by Mackinnon, a surgeon in the Bengal medical establishment, who tried it in numerous cases of tapeworm. Anderson and others in India, and Leared in London, confirmed the results obtained, and established the fact that kâmalâ is an efficient taenifuge. It was soon after introduced into the British pharmacopoeia (1864).
Kâmalâ floats on water, which scarcely acts on it even at a boiling heat, but it yields about 80 per cent, of a splendid red resin to alcohol, ether, chloroform, benzol, glacial acetic acid and bisulphide of carbon. When sprinkled over a flame it ignites with a flash like lycopodium, and yields after incineration about 1 *7 per cent, of ash. Leube found that the resin consisted of two varieties, one more easily soluble, and fusing at 176° Fahr. (80° C.), and the other dissolving less readily, fusing at 375 ’ 8° Fahr. (191° C.). Anderson obtained a substance, named by him rottierin, C 22 H 20 O 6 , by allowing a strong ethereal solution of kâmalâ to stand for a few days. This when purified by recrystallization formed satiny minute tabular yellow crystals soluble in ether, sparingly soluble in cold and more so in hot alcohol, and insoluble in water.
Another kind of kâmalâ under the Arabic name of wars is sometimes exported from Aden, where it is shipped from Harar on the east coast of Africa, and is also collected in southern Arabia and exported thence to the Persian Gulf and Bombay. The plant from which this variety is obtained is not known. It differs from true kâmalâ in having a deep purple colour, in the greater coarseness of its particles, in yielding 12 per cent, of ash, in having long simple hairs mixed with it, and in becoming quite black when heated to from 199 , 4° Fahr. (93° (λ)to212° Fahr. (100° C.), at which temperature true kâmalâ undergoes no change. The microscopic structure of the glands is also different, the resin cells being oblong instead of club-shaped, and the grains themselves cylindrical or subconical instead of irregularly spherical. It is to this variety of kâmalâ that the name wars alone belongs, while kâmalâ, kanbil, and qinbil are restricted to the red powder collected in India. In 1875-76 there were exported from Aden 42,975 lb of wars. Dr Vaughan when residing in Aden in 1852 observed that under the name of wars kâmalâ was also used as a dyestuff for silk (Pharmacographia, p.
See Hanbury, Science Papers, p. 73; Pharmacοgraρhia, 2d ed., p. 572; Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, 236; Roxburgh, Plants of Coromandel, 1798, ii., tab. 168; Pharmaceutical Journal (2), vol. ix. p. 280; Hunter, Account of Aden, 1877, p. 187.
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