It is a small shrub, about 2 ft high, with a pale green smooth erect stem, long spreading branches, bearing four or five pairs of leaves. The flowers are small and yellow, the pods broadly oblong and containing about six seeds.
Senna is an Arabian name, and the plant is grown mostly in Nubia. Twice a year the plants are cut down, dried in the sun, stripped and packed in palm-leaf bags and sent on camels to Essouan and Darao then up the Nile to Cairo or else to Red Sea ports.
It is a purgative, closely related to Aloe and Rhubarb, the active ingredients being anthraquinone derivatives and their glucosides. Its action is on the lower bowel, and is especially useful in habitual costiveness. It increases the peristaltic movements of the colon.
The pods are milder in their effects than the seeds as they contain less of the resin responsible for griping.
Monumental genius, frightening commitment, and a willingness to go right to the very edge forged Ayrton Senna da Silva into one of the greatest drivers, and his record for 65 pole positions was still unchallenged more than six years after his death in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola on May 1 1994.
Senna narrowly missed the World Championship in karting, having started driving at the age of four, and it rankled forever.
In Japan in 1990 Senna's frustration at losing the title to Prost the previous year finally bubbled over as he deliberately rammed the Frenchman's Ferrari out of the Japanese Grand Prix, and thereby recovered the crown he regarded as a birthright.
That this is the active principle of senna is shown by the fact that the cathartate of ammonia, when given separately, acts in precisely the same manner as senna itself.
It is known as the mistura sennae cornposita, and contains sulphate of magnesium, liquorice, cardamoms, aromatic spirit of ammonia and infusion of senna.
Senna should not be used alone, as its taste and the pain induced by its muscular stimulation are both objectionable.
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