KOUSSO, Kosso, or Cusso, a drug recently introduced into English medicine as a remedy for tapeworm. It consists of the flowers of Hagenia abyssinica, Willd. (Brayera anthelminthica, Kunth.), a handsome rosaceous tree 60 feet high, growing throughout the table-land of Abyssinia, at an elevation of 3000 to 8000 feet above the sea-level. The drug as imported is in the form of cylindrical rolls, about 18 inches in length and 2 inches in diameter, and comprises the entire inflorescence or panicle kept in form by a band wound transversely round it. The flowers have a light brown hue, or in the case of the female flower a reddish tinge, for which reason the latter is sometimes distinguished as red kousso. The active principle of kousso is stated by Fliickiger to be kosin, C 31 H 38 Oj 0 ; it is supposed to be a compound ether of isobutyric acid, since it gives off the odour of this substance when its solution in concentrated sulphuric acid is diluted with water. Kosin appears to have been first obtained as a definite crystalline substance by Merck, who prepared it in the form of tasteless yellowish rhombic needles or prisms, soluble in chloroform, ether, benzol, and bisulphide of carbon, very soluble in boiling but only sparingly so in cold alcohol. It is not decomposed by boiling dilute acids. The koussin of Bedall appears to be an impure substance containing variable quantities of crystalline kosin. Kousso yields on distillation a stearoptene-like oil having the odour of the drug, also traces of valerianic and acetic acids. The medicinal properties of kousso were first investigated in 1822 by Brayer, a French physician of Constantinople, but the drug did not come into use in Europe until 1850; in 1864 it was introduced into the British pharmacopoeia. In medicine it is used ...