Alkaloids, Gums and Mucilages

Alkaloids Occur in some plants. They are complex organic nitrogenous compounds and are derived from proteins. They are mostly odorless but are bitter to taste. While they are of no use to the plants that produce them, they are of great economic and medicinal value. In small doses, they have stimulatory and narcotic effects on animals and man and in large doses they are fatal.

They represent the poisonous principle to which the medicinal properties of certain plants are due. Some of the well known alkaloids are nicotine from tobacco, atropine from deadly nightshade, morphine from poppy, quinine from the bark of Cinchona tree, caffeine from coffee seeds, cocaine from cocoa leaves, strichnine from Nux vomica and colchicines from Colchicum.

Gums are amorphous translucent substances which appear as exudates from the stems of certain woody plants, for examples gum Arabic from Acacia Arabica and A. Senegal, gum tragacanth from Astragalus, peach gum from peach and plum. They absorb large quantities of water and swell up to from a jelly-like mass. On account of their great water holding property they may be of importance to plants of xeric habitats. Gums Arabic forms a viscous fluid with water which is used as an adhesive, in the manufacture of chewing gum and as soothing agent in cough syrup.

Mucilages are simply substances which swell up in water, forming colloids emulsions. They are met in the succulent stems of optunia, leaves of aloe, flowers of malvacea, fruits of lady’s finger and Cordia myxa and seed of quince.

Many fungi and bacteria produce antibiotic which are of great medicinal value in combating certain bacterial diseases. Antibiotics are substances which are produced by one kind of micro-organism and which inhibits the growth of destroy other kinds of organisms. They are effective against pathogenic bacteria. Example of antibiotics are penicillin, streptomycin and Terramycin.