CONIUM MACULATUM (Con. mac.)

Botanical name : Conium maculatum Linn. Family: Umbelliferae (Apiaceae)

Common names : Hindi: Kurdumana; English: Poison Hemlock; French: Cigue; German: Schierling.

Description : A poisonous, much branched herb, 30 to 60 cm in height with stems speckled reddish-purple. Leaves pinnately decompound, the segments pinnati- fid and toothed. Flowers white in compound many-rayed umbels with few bracts and bractioles; carpels-ribbed. Fruit broadly ovate, laterally compressed and at the commenisures more or less constricted ribs somewhat tuberculate.

Microscopical : The diagnostic characters are: epidermal cells with striated cuticle, wavy anticlinal walls and containing yellow dendritic crystals of diosmin, the cells at the margin in about 3 longitudinal rows in both upper and lower surfaces, stomata rarunculaceous, rare on upper surface and numerous on lower surface; water pores on upper surface at tips of teeth; single layer of palisade tissue; petiole, approximately oval in transverse section with about 9 shallow, external, collenchymatous ridges a single collateral bundle being with present opposite each ridge and thus forming a circle of bundles around central cavity; solitary secretory canal adjoining each phloem group and additional but similar canals flanking xylem of each bundles in petiole; rachis with structure similar to that of petiole but with fewer angles and a shallow median groove on the upper surface; absence of trichomes, calcium oxalate and sclerids from the lamina.

Habitat : Temperate regions of Asia, Europe and N. Africa.

History and authority : Hahnemann published his proving in 1825. Allen’s Encyclop. Mat. Med. Vol. III, 519.

Part used : The whole plant. Moisture content of fresh plant 300 ml per 100 g solids.

Preparation : (a) Mother Tincture φ Drug strength 1/10 Conium Maculatum in coarse powder 100 g Purified Water 400 ml Strong Alcohol 637 ml to make one thousand millilitres of the Mother Tincture.

(b) Potencies: 2x to contain one part tincture, three parts Purified Water and six parts Strong Alcohol. 3x and higher with Dispensing Alcohol.

Old method : Class I