The kosso or Brayera anthelmintica / [Jonathan Pereira].

  • Pereira, Jonathan, 1804-1853
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The kosso or Brayera anthelmintica / [Jonathan Pereira]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ From the Pharmaceutical Journal for July, 1850. THE IvOSSO OR BRAYERA ANTHELMINTICA. BY JONATHAN PEREIRA, M.D., F.R.S. History.—Kosso has been in use in Abyssinia, as an anthelmintic for more than two centuries; for Leutholf (Ludolfi, Historia JEthiopica, lib. i., cap. ix., sect. 31, 1681) says that “N. Godingus* praises another tree as being very efficacious against lumbrici, which are produced by the use of raw meat. But the Abyssinians purge themselves every month with the fruit of this tree, and thus,” he says, “destroy these worms.” Now there can be little doubt, I conceive, but that this passage refers to the kosso. Bruce in his Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, from 1768 to 1773 (vol. v., p. 73), published at London in 1790, mentions this medicine, which he calls cusso, and proposes to name the tree Banksia Abyssinica, after Sir Joseph Banks, the then president of the Royal Society. But the younger Linnasus, in the Supplementum Plantarum, published at Brunswick in 1781, had already appropriated the name of Banksia to a New Holland genus of proteaceous plants, and he has been followed by all succeeding botanists ; so that it is obvious that Bruce’s proposed botanical name for the kosso cannot be adopted. Bruce gave a very good popular account of kosso, accompanied by what he justly terms “ a true and exact ” figure of the plant. I have compared his figures with a specimen of the plant collected in Abyssinia by Schimper, and contained in the herbarium of my friend Mr. N. B. Ward, and with the commercial flowers, and find that they are fair representations of the plant. Bruce states that the Abyssinians evacuate once a month “ a large quantity of worms ; these are not the tape-worm, or those that trouble children, but,they are the sort of worm called ascarides.” This state¬ ment agrees with that of Godingus just quoted ; but it does not accord with the observations of other travellers, who tell us that the worms with which the Abyssinians are troubled, and for which they employ the kosso, is the tape-worm. The accuracy of this latter statement has been proved by Dr. Hodgkin (.Medical Times, October 26th, 1844, p. 74) who gave oil of turpentine to an Abyssinian in the service of Dr. Beke, and thereby expelled a Taenia solium—the same kind of tape-worm which prevails in England, and which is understood to prevail at the Cape of Good Hope. In the Encyclopedic Methodique (Botanique, Supplem. t. ii., p. 423, 1811) Lamarck has described the Cusso d'Abyssinie, which he named after Dr. C. G. Hagen, a professor at Konigsberg, the Hagenia Abyssinica. He says the tree was discovered by Brown—but I pre¬ sume that this is a typographical error, and that for “ Brown” should * Be Abyssinorum rebus, lib. i., cap. 2. Lyon, 1615. 8ro.