Elaterium, a drug obtained from the fruit of the Squirting Cucumber (Ecballium Elaterium, formerly Momordica Elaterium), a native of the south of Europe, common on rubbish in the villages of Greece and the Archipelago.
The fruit breaks from its stalk, and violently expels its seeds with the surrounding mucus through the opening thus made. This remarkable phenomenon is not due to any true contractility, but simply to the tension due to osmosis; much, in fact, as ripe gooseberries burst after prolonged rainy weather. It is the thick green mucus surrounding the seeds which yields the elaterium. This is simply prepared by drying the sediment which settles from the juice of the nearly ripened fruit.
Elaterium is used in medicine as a drastic hydrogogue cathartic. Its active principle is a body called Elaterin, , which is probably the most powerful purgative known, the ordinary dose being only from to grain. Both elaterium and elaterin are officinal in the British Pharmacopoeia. It is an exceedingly drastic purgative, used in dropsy. It acts as an irritant not only on the eyes, but even on the fingers of those who handle it. The use of elaterium was known to the ancients.