Cascara frangola

Small shrubs of the Ramnaceae family, whose bark with laxative-stimulating properties is used. These drugs are subjected to a working process related to the intended function and use. They are bark drugs and as soon as they are harvested they have high amounts of anthranols, compounds of anthracene derivation that have a high irritant power and do not cause an easy use of the drug itself. Simple drying is not sufficient to oxidize these anthranols to anthrax and anthraquinones.

Once these drugs were kept at rest for a year after drying (time considered necessary for the oxidation of all anthranols to anthrax and anthraquinones); only in this way could drugs such as Cascara and Frangola be used as drugs for anthraquinones. However, today's herbal market requires much faster times and methods of production, so the Cascara and the Frangola are dried in an oven at 100 ° C for an hour. This drying treatment ensures the oxidation of anthranols - or most of them - to anthraxes and anthraquinones, making the drug of immediate use. The treatment to which the Cascara and Frangola are subjected is very drastic compared to other anthraquinone drugs, but it is absolutely necessary, precisely because in the fresh state they have high amounts of anthranols (which give the drug emetic properties, this means that they cause vomiting because they are particularly irritating, if retained and not rejected, the drugs that contain them may even be caustic, as indeed all anthraquinones taken in particularly excessive doses). These drugs should not be administered to patients with long periods of constipation (delay or arrest of the function of the intestine or of the entire digestive system) and whose cause has not yet been ascertained.