Coto Bark.

Origin—The botanical source of coto bark is not certainly known, but it is supposed to be obtained from a species of nectandra, a tree growing in Bolivia.

CONSTITUENTS—

A volatile alkaloid, volatile oil, resin, starch, gum, sugar, calcium oxalate, tannin, formic, butyric and acetic acids, cotoin, para-cotoin, oxyleucotin, leucolin, hydrocotin, dibenzoylhydrocotin, peperonylic acid.

PREPARATIONS—

Fluid Extract of Coto Bark. Dose, from five to twenty minims.

Specific Symptomatology—Epidemic diarrhea, attacks occurring at night suddenly, or in early morning stools frequent, ten to twenty in a few hours; colliquative, rice-water stools, nausea and vomiting with great distress, sharp, cutting pain in the bowels, involuntary evacuations, extreme prostration, surface bathed in cold clammy perspiration, collapse, febrile reaction.

Therapy—It is a carminative, stimulant and astringent. It has a specific effect on the alimentary canal but is not a suitable remedy where inflammation exists or is threatened, but rather should be employed in relaxed states, and where some poisonous element has been taken into the system in the food or drinking water. It is antiseptic or promotes asepsis.

It acts favorably in the diarrhoea of typhoid fever, in colliquative diarrhea from whatever cause, in the diarrhea of consumptives and in atonic and catarrhal diarrhea.

It possesses astringent properties and contracts the relaxed vessels. It is one of our most efficient remedies in the exhaustive sweats of consumptive patients. It may be given in ten drop doses of the fluid extract, repeated according to the urgency of the case.

The best results have been obtained from rather large doses, and it is a good rule where relief does not follow the prescribed dose to increase it.

Dr. Edison of Indiana was quite enthusiastic on the action of coto. He claimed that there was not only an astringent but a positive nerve sedative influence from its action; that it controlled intestinal pain and soothed the nervous system, and in one case he thought that its influence amounted to a temporary paresis. The agent deserves further study.

The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, was written by Finley Ellingwood, M.D.
It was scanned by Michael Moore for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.