Farina. Wheat Flour. Appendix A. The flour of the seed ground and sifted, of Triticum vulgare; Lin. Syst., Triandria digynia; growing in Europe, and cultivated also over the greater part of the civilised world.

Bread. Bread made with Wheat Flour. Appendix A.

Amylum. Wheat Starch. Starch procured from the seed of Triticum vulgare.

Description. These substances are too well known to need description. Starch occurs in white columnar masses, which become blue with solution of iodine.

Prop. & Comp. Flour consists chiefly of starch and gluten, together with gum, sugar, mucilage, and water. If kneaded under a stream of water, the starch is washed away, and a tenacious mass left behind, which consists of gluten, constituting from 10 to 12 per cent. of the flour. Gluten prepared in the above manner consists of two different substances, one of which is soluble in alcohol, pure gluten, or vegetable fibrine, the other insoluble in that menstruum known as vegetable albumen. Starch occurs as a white granular powder, without odour or taste, which under the microscope is found to consist of grains of varying size, having more or less of a circular outline and flattened, the hilum in the centre is surrounded by a series of concentric rings reaching sometimes nearly to the circumference. Each grain is formed of a thin external albuminous coat, containing a substance which is termed amidin or gelatinous starch.

Amidin is the same from whatever source derived, and it is to the different forms of the external coat that the peculiarities of the different granules of starch, when derived from the different sources, are due. Amidin is soluble in hot water, but starch requires boiling for some little time, in order that the contents of the granules may swell and burst the envelope, before a solution can be made. Amidin strikes a fine blue colour on the addition of free iodine, forming a compound (Iodide of Amidin), which is a ready means of detecting its presence; this blue colour is destroyed by a heat of 200° Fah., but returns when the solution cools. By heating for some time with dilute sulphuric acid, starch is first converted into dextrine, and afterwards into glucose or grape sugar. Strong nitric acid changes starch into oxalic acid. The composition of amidin or gelatinous starch is represented by the formula (C24 H20 O 20).

Off. Prep. - Of Amylum. Mucilago Amyli. [Not officinal in U. S. P.] Mucilage of starch. (Starch, one hundred and twenty grains; distilled water, ten fluid ounces. Prepared by trituration and boiling.)

Therapeutics. Made into bread, flour forms a well-known nutritive article of diet. In medicine it is chiefly used in the form of bread crumbs (mica panis), for giving consistence to pills; it is also employed as an emollient cataplasm. Flour is used as an ingredient of Cataplasma Fermenti. Starch is a mild nutritive demulcent; in the form of mucilage, it is used as a vehicle for enemata.

Hordeum. Pearl Barley. The decorticated seeds of Hordeum distichon; Lin. Syst., Triandria digynia; cultivated in Britain.

Description. Chiefly seen in the shops in the form of pearl barley, white, rounded, retaining a trace of the longitudinal furrow. It consists of the seeds decorticated and rounded in a mill.

Prop. & Comp. It contains gluten, starch, gum, and saccharine matters.

Off. Prep. Decoctum Hordei. Decoction of Barley. (Pearl barley, two ounces; boiling distilled water, thirty fluid ounces. Prepared by washing the barley well in cold water, rejecting the washings; and subsequent decoction.)

Therapeutics. Used in medicine in the form of decoction as a mild nutritive and demulcent drink.

Dose. Ad libitum.

Avena. Oats. (Not officinal.) The decorticated seeds of Avena sativa, the Common Oat; Lin. Syst., Triandria digynia; growing in almost all parts of the world.

Description. The decorticated grains are known as groats; when decorticated and ground to powder, as prepared groats.

First dried in a kiln, and then coarsely ground, they form oatmeal.

Prop. & Comp. Oatmeal contains starch, gluten, lignin, sugar, and bitter extractive. The amount of starch is considerable, amounting sometimes to 72 per cent.

Therapeutics. A useful demulcent and emollient, much used in the form of a decoction familiarly known as gruel, also as an enema.

Ergota. Ergot. The grain of the Secale cereale, diseased by an imperfect fungus. [The diseased seeds of Secale cereale. U. S.] Secale cornutum, Spurred Rye.

Description. Ergot occurs in grains, varying in length from one-third of an inch to an inch, and in breadth in the same proportion; somewhat triangular in form, curved, obtuse at the ends, furrowed on two sides, of a purple or brown colour, covered more or less by a bloom; moderately brittle; fracture short, exhibiting a white or pinkish interior; odour faint, but in large quantities, strong and peculiar. Ergot has been considered as a fungus growing in the place of the ovary between the glumes, or as a diseased condition of the grain, produced by the mycelium of Cordyceps purpurea. The latter view seems to be the one more generally entertained at present.

The healthy grain of rye consists of the seed-coat, composed of outer and inner layers, and the cells, containing gluten; and next, the cells of albumen, containing starch. In the ergotized grain, the seed-coat and gluten cells are replaced by a layer of dark cells - the large cells of the albumen by the small cells of the ergot, and the starch grains of the albumen cells by drops of oil. The bloom consists of the sporidia of the fungus.

The ergot is liable to be fed on by a species of acarus, which sometimes destroys the whole interior, leaving only the outer shell and its own excrementitial matter.

Prop. & Comp. Ergot contains a large quantity of fixed oil, about 35 per cent.; this was at first thought to be the active principle; subsequent researches have shown, however, that the fixed oil, when obtained by expression, is inactive, and it would seem that the active principle is extracted with the oil, and remains dissolved in it, but the oil itself is not that principle. A peculiar reddish-brown substance having active properties has been named Ergotine, soluble in water, forming a red solution, and having a strong bitter taste. It is stated that ergotine constitutes about 15 per cent. of the ergotized grain. By distillation with potash, propylamin (C8 H9 Nh2) has been procured from ergot, a substance having the peculiar odour of herring pickle. Ergot yields its peculiar virtues to alcohol and water.