Scammony is a gum-resin of an ashy-gray colour, and rough externally, and having a resinous, splintering fracture. Few drugs are so uniformly adulterated as scammony, which, when pure, contains from 81 to 83 per cent. of resin (the active purgative ingredient), 6 or 8 of gum, with a little starch, sand, fibre, and water. Ordinary adulterants are chalk, flour, guaiacum, resin, and gum tragacanth. Scammony, when pure, is an excellent and trustworthy cathartic of the drastic kind, well adapted for cases of habitual constipation, and as an active purgative for children. The resin of scammony, which is extracted from the crude drug by rectified spirit, possesses the advantage of being always of a nearly uniform strength, and of being almost tasteless. The Scammony Mixture, composed of four grains of resin of scammony, triturated with two ounces of milk, until a uniform emulsion is obtained, forms an admirable purgative for young children in doses of half an ounce or more. According to Christison, 'between 7 and 14 grains of resin, in the form of this emulsion, constitute a safe and effectual purgative' for adults. Another popular form for the administration of scammony is the Compound Powder of Scammony, composed of scammony, jalap, and ginger, the dose for a child being from 2 to 5 grains, and for an adult from 6 Scammony (Convolvulus Scammonia): to 12 grains. a, portion of root (Bentley and Trimen). Scammony is frequently given surreptitiously in the form of biscuit to children troubled with thread-worms.
The plant which produces this valuable drug is Convolvulus Scammonia (see CONVOLVULUS), a native of the Levant. It is a perennial, with a thick fleshy tapering root, 3 to 4 feet long, and 3 to 4 inches in diameter, which sends up several smooth slender twining stems, with arrow-head-shaped leaves on long stalks. The root is full of an acrid milky juice, which indeed pervades the whole plant. The scammony plant is not cultivated, but the drug is collected from it where it grows wild. The ordinary mode of collecting scammony is by laying bare the upper part of the root, making incisions, and placing shells or small vessels to receive the juice as it flows, which soon dries and hardens in the air.