=Cakes, Tip'sy.= _Prep._ Small sponge cakes steeped in brandy, and then
covered with grated almonds and candied peel; or almonds (cut into spikes)
are stuck in them. They are commonly piled on a dish, surrounded with a
custard, and covered with preserves drained as dry as possible.
=Cakes, Wigg.= _Prep._ From 1/2 pint of warm milk; 3/4 lb. of fine flour;
and 2 or 3 spoonfuls of light yeast. Afterwards work in 4 oz. each of
sugar and butter; make it into cakes, or wiggs, with as little flour as
possible, add a few caraway seeds, and bake them quickly.
=Cakes.= (In _medicine_.) Cakes have been used as a form of administering
medicinal substances to children, but have not been extensively employed
in this country for the purpose, unless by quacks and in domestic
practice. In preparing them the active ingredients are added in such
proportions to the common materials of a sweet cake that one or two, as
the case may be, are sufficient for a dose. See GINGERBREAD, WORM-CAKES,
&c.
=CALA'BAR BEAN.= _Syn._ PHYSOSTIGMATIS FABA. The seed of _Physostigma
venenosum_. The plant is a native of Western Africa, where the bean is
used as an ordeal poison. The bean itself is about the size of a large
horse-bean, with a very firm, hard, brittle, shining coat of a
brownish-red, pale chocolate, or ash-grey colour. It has an irregular
kidney shape, with flat surfaces and a rounded border, which is for the
most part boldly curved, and there marked with a broad furrow, with the
central raised raphe in the centre, and ending at one extremity in the
microphyle. The kernel consists of two cotyledons. It yields its
properties to alcohol, and imperfectly to water. Calabar bean has been
used in cases of strychnia poisoning and tetanus, as well as in epilepsy
and St. Vitus's dance. The dose of the powdered bean, according to Royle,
is one to four grains. Locally applied it produces contraction of the
pupil.
Until the researches of Harnack and Witkowsky the Calabar bean was
supposed to owe its activity, when internally administered, to the
presence of a powerful alkaloid called _esernia_ or _physostigma_. These
chemists, however, have lately succeeded in discovering in the bean, in
addition to eserina, another very potent alkaloid, to which they have
given the name _calabaria_ or _calabarine_.
Calabarine appears to exert a physiological action antagonistic to that of
eserine, and since the commercial preparations of the drug consist,
according to the above chemists, of mixtures of the two alkaloids in
varying proportions, the discordant effects frequently observed to follow
the administration of any of the various preparations of the bean, admit
of ready explanation. Wherever eserine predominated it appeared to
suppress the effects of calabarine; on the other hand, if this latter
preponderated, the paralysing effect on the spinal cord otherwise
exercised by eserine would fail to be produced.
The necessity of having preparations of calabar free from calabarine, in
cases where the drug is administered for tetanus, will be apparent when it
is stated that calabarine itself induces the disease.