EUCALYPTUS OIL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 63, 11 February 1884, Page 3

EUCALYPTUS OIL.

In a recent number of the Australasian Medical Gasette, Baron Sir Ferd Von Mueller, K. addresses a powerful appeal to the members of the medical profession of Australasia on behalf of the eucalyptus, the medicinal properties of which he holds to be more than Ordinarily useful. The Baron’s paper, which is now published in a pamphlet form by Mr. L. Bruck, of this city, consists principally of excerpts from an able treatise on eucalyptus oil by Professor Hugo Schultz, of the University of Bonn, published ip 1881. The Baron prefaces his translations of this work, which he considers replete, with original observations, chemical, physiological, and niedicinal, with the following comments “ Strangely enough, in the very lands of the eucalyptus their medicinal properties, though powerful and safe, have obtained hitherto but very inadequate professional recognition in either medicine or surgery. Btill eucalyptus oil and several purchaseable eucalyptus preparations have made their way to some extent as popular or domestic remedies in Australia also, Absence of malarian fevers from most parts of the Australian territory may account to some extent for the very limited use into which the eucalypti are drawn by legitimate therapy in this part of the globe, But we have now such overwhelming testimony of the special value of the oil as an antipyretic and antiseptic from abroad, that the new observations of Professor Schults deserve also here a careful and extensive study by medical practitioners. The Professor, in the sixteen chapters which he devotes to the subject, brings together idofe .an array of successful results arrived at by the use of leaves, extracts, and oils of the eucalptus that we can well understand why the Baron con. eludes his review as follows;—“ In concluding this contribution towards the Australian literature of the British Medical Association, the writer, in bringing the recent work of an eminent foreign professor of medicine before the Australian profession, entertains a hope that not only thereby the still largely prevailing discredence in the extraordinary medicinal value of the eucalyptus will wear away, but also that medical men in this part of the globe, and more particularly those commanding hospital facilities, will aid, by independent local researches, to determine the exact value of each of the various eucalypti, numbering about 120 Well-marked marked species, in medicine and surgery, for which purpose the facilities in the native lands of the eucalypts must necessarily be greater than elsewhere.”