5. Arjuna Thwak
Names:-
Latin Terminalia arjuna
Tamil Marudam pattai
Telugu Maddipatta
Canarese Maddi chekka
Malayal Nermadalam
Urdu Arjun
Kakubhah Seetalo Hridyah
Kshata Kshaya Vishaasrajit
Medomeha Vranaam Hanti
Tuvarah Kapha Pitta Hrit.
Arjuna (Kakubhah) is cooling and checks heart diseases, Haemorrhagic consumption and poisons (Toxaemia). It is useful in obesity (Medas) and in Diabetic wounds. It is astringent and checks Kapha and Pitta. As an astringent, it is used in tooth powders.
Dose:- 5 to 30 grains as a powder.
Action:- Cardiac tonic.
Uses:- It is a reputed heart tonic of the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia. I have observed large doses to depress the heart. Small doses taken over a long period with sugar and ghee steadily improved the condition of the heart giving it strength. It is used as a powder either alone or as a compound as in Kakabudi choornam or in Arjunaarishta.
6. Arka
Names:- Latin Calotropis gigantea
Tamil Erukku
Telugu Jilledu
Canarese Ekka
Malayal Erukku
Urdu Madar
Arkaadiko Ganohyeshah
Kapha medo Vishaapahaah
Krimi Kushta Prasamano
Viseshaat VranasodhanahSusruta.
The group of drugs beginning with Arka (Arkaadigana) checks Kapha and fat, and poisons. It alleviates diseases due to worms and Kushta. It is specially useful for cleaning wounds.
Dose:-
Internally –
Of the dry root bark 3 to 10 grains as a tonic and 30 to 60 grains as an emetic.
Milk of the plant dried and made into powder – 3 to 10 grains.
Decoction 1 in 8, reduced to half – ¼ to 1 oz.
Compound pills –
1. Hingilikam heated gently stirring with the milky juice continuously replenished for some hours and the stick so obtained is used along with other anupanams.
2. Calomel grain 1, Rasanjanam (Antimony sulphide powder), grains 5, make one pill with honey. 1 pill 2 or 3 times a day for elephantiasis and syphilis.
3. Fresh flowers made into pills, with equal parts of pepper and a little honey, of 5 grains and kept in a stoppered bottle.
4. Arka Pippali. Pippali is soaked in the milk of Arka and ground in mortar for six days (Bhaavana) and dried and kept well corked. Dose ½ to 2 gr.
5. Take Arka flower, Pepper and Lasuna in equal parts. Grind well in a mortar and make into 5 gr. Pills. – Arkaadi Vati.
For Snake bites –
Milky juice made into a pill of small marble size and given wrapped in betel leaf. Repeated every half hour till vomiting is caused or after 2 doses reduce the dose and give upto 9 doses.
Juice mixed with water in the same doses as above if the patient cannot swallow the pill.
Leaves two or three – chew and swallow after snake-bite.
Apply root rubbed in water over the bite; Same as kalikam into the eyes.
One Tola of the swarasam of the root-bark for snake poison.
Ghee:- Dry flowers 10 to 12. Ghee 5 tolas. Boil the ghee and strain. Dose of the ghee ½ to 1 tola.
Oil:- Prepared by boiling the milk of the plant, goat’s milk, tamarind leaf juice and Nirgundi swarasam and gingelly oil in equal parts. (Refer Arkaadi Thaila).
Flowers:- Dry flowers mixed with equal parts of pepper and salt and made into powder. Dose 3 to 10 grains twice a day gradually increased or as a confection or one flower may be chewed with betel leaf.
Ash:- Of the ash (kshaara) 1 to 5 grains with plenty o water.
Externally –
Leaf:- Smear the leaf on the soft side with castor-oil, warm it and apply comfortably hot to inflammatory swellings or inflamed anus or piles.
Take a handful of the leaves. Cut them in the middle. Tie them into a bundle so as to expose the cut-surfaces as a brush. Dip the cut-surfaces in hot oil. Remove excess of oil and foment with the cut-surfaces over painful joints or painful glands comfortably warm.
Warm the ripe leaf and squeeze the juice into the painful or suppurating ear.
Milky juice:- Mix fresh milk with salt and apply to small cuts or sprains or painful tooth or painful joints or nervous pain or boils.
Milky juice or crushed leaf applied over the scorpion bite.
The application of the milky juice is depilatory (Romanaasaka). Also useful in ring-worm of the scalp.
Root:- Grind the root with water obtained by washing raw rice, make into a paste and apply to the affected parts in elephantiasis.
Action:- Purgative and emetic in large doses, antispasmodic, expectorant, diaphoretic, antimalarial, antidysentric, antisyphilitic, antiparasitic for tapeworm, emmenagogue, bloodpurifier and tonic in small doses.
Uses:- Calotropis gigantean or Arka is of two kinds, purple and white flowered. The white flowered variety is believed to be more efficacious. It is a powerful drug used in a variety of ways by some physicians who have great success depends upon the proper administration of the dose and diet. In the hands of the experienced physicians it is absolutely safe, and of the inexperienced, most dangerous. So also are the modern injections containing virulent poisons such as arsenic.
It is used with success to relieve the fits of asthma and the pains of rheumatism. The milky-juice is applied over the painful joints and covered with turmeric by the poor. In diseases of the spine and the nervous system, the fresh milk is applied over the spinal cord and dusted with turmeric. The confection of the flowers is more used in chronic asthama and bronchitis. The powdered root-bark with pepper is also used for the same purpose. It is also known to be antidysentric. The compound powder is given in heart disease, dyspepsia, cholera, syphilis, leprosy, gonorrhoea, asthma, dropsy, ascites, rheumatism, malarial fever and skin diseases. An external application of turmeric mixed with the milky-juice is recommended by Vangasena for dark patches of discoloration in the face. The root-bark powdered, soaked in the milky-juice is recommended by Vangasena for dark patches of discoloration in the face. The root-bark powdered, soaked in the milky juice, dried and made into cigars is smoked as an inhalation in cough and asthma. In cases of severe post-nasal catarrh and obstruction in the throat with difficult breathing, the pollen grains of the flower are tactfully dusted in the nostrils by suitably placing the flower in front of the nostril and dealing a sharp finger blow so as to eject out the pollen grains into the nostrils. This has an immediate irritating action which relieves the congestion and swelling of the throat and nose (an expert treatment). The ashes of the leaves obtained by roasting in a closed vessel mixed with rock-salt is given in enlargement of the liver and spleen, in intestinal worms, ascites, anasarca and in dysentery (Dose 3 to 10 grains).
Arka Pippali is used by me in severe types of Asthma during the fit. It may cause a vomit but it relieves the fit at once. Arkadi Vati – I have used it as a reliable specific in some cases of Malaria (of the Kapha type).
Antidote for poisoning by Arka:-
Internally-
1. Fresh juice of the indigo leaf.
2. Sugar mixed in water.
3. Tamarind leaf juice mixed with water.
4. Castor oil 1 dose.
