Colocynth
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Colocynth. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a plant of the squash or gourd family. It is known also as coloquintida, bitter apple, and, by botanists, as Cucumis Colocynthis. The plant springs from a perennial root. The foliage resembles that of the cucumber. Like the melon, squash, pumpkin, cucumber, and other members of the family, the colocynth produces two kinds of flowers, one bearing stamens, the other bearing pistils. The fruit resembles an orange in size and color. The rind is thick, light, and spongy. The pulp is exceedingly bitter. There are from 200 to 300 seeds in each fruit. In time of need the Arabs use the seed for food. A coarse oil is pressed from the seeds. The bitter pulp is peeled, freed from seeds, and dried. In this form it is the colocynth of the druggist. It is a drastic purgative, of which an herbalist's book of the eleventh century says: "For stirring of the inwards, take the inward neshness of the fruit, without the kernels, by weight of two pennies; give it, pounded in lithe beer, to be drunk; it stirreth the inwards." In medicine colocynth is given usually with aloes and other drugs. The commercial article is obtained from Spain and Asia Minor . The colocynth ranges from the Cape Verde Islands, through Mediterranean Africa and the Grecian Archipelago and Asia Minor, as far east as Ceylon and India.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the pith of the bitter apple; the fruit of the Citrullus Colocynthus, which is violently purgative. It is imported dried, and generally peeled, from Turkey, and is rarely used alone. One of the most valuable purgatives is the compound extract of Colocynth, which is a combination of this drug with aloes, scammony, cardamom seeds, and soap. doses, Colocynth is an irritant large poison.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The two accounts differ even on the name: Aiton's 1910 entry calls it Cucumis Colocynthis, while Collier's in 1921 uses Citrullus, which is the name botanists have settled on (Citrullus colocynthis, a close wild relative of the watermelon). The bigger change is medical. The "compound extract of colocynth" that Collier's called "one of the most valuable purgatives" has been abandoned by mainstream medicine: the drastic irritant purgatives were dropped from Western practice across the mid-20th century in favour of gentler laxatives, and colocynth is now better known to doctors as a cause of poisoning, with reported cases of severe bloody diarrhoea and deaths after people took it as a folk remedy. It survives in homeopathy and in traditional medicine around the Mediterranean and South Asia, and its bitter cucurbitacins and its seed oil are studied by chemists rather than dispensed by druggists.
Written for this edition, 2026.