I.—Phænogamous or Flowering Plants (part 7)

From the wood, treated with boiling alcohol, we obtained about 7 per cent. of a blackish extract, from which a tannate was precipitated by alcoholic solution of acetate of lead. Decomposed by sulphuretted hydrogen, the tannate yielded a tannic acid having but little colour, and striking a greenish hue with a ferric salt. The extract also contained a dark resin.

Commerce—The greatest trade in sandal-wood is in China, which country in the year 1866 imported at the fourteen treaty ports then open 87,321 peculs, equivalent to 5,197 tons; of this vast quantity the city of Hankow on the river Yangtsze, received no less than 61,414 peculs, or more than seven times as much as any other port. The imports into Hankow have recently been much smaller, namely, 14,989 peculs in 1871 and 12,798 peculs in 1872. On the other hand, Shanghai lying near the mouth of the same great river, imported in 1872, 59,485 peculs of sandal-wood, the estimated value of which was about £100,000. In 1877 the imports of all China were 72,934 peculs.

A considerable trade in sandal-wood is done in Bombay, the quantity imported thither annually being about 650 tons, and the animal export about 400 tons.

Oil of sandal-wood is largely manufactured on the ghats between Mangalore and Mysore, where fuel for the stills is abundant. Official returns represent the quantity of the oil imported into Bombay in the year 1872-73 as 10,348 lbs., value £8,374; 4,500 lbs. were re-exported by sea.

Uses—The essential oil has of late been prescribed as a substitute for copaiba, otherwise sandal-wood has hardly any uses in modern European medicine. It is employed as a perfume and for the fabrication of small articles of ornament. Among the natives of India it is largely consumed in the celebration of sepulchral rites, wealthy Hindus showing their respect for a departed relative by adding sticks of sandal-wood to the funereal pile. The powder of the wood made into a paste with water is used for making the caste mark, and also for medicinal purposes. The consumption of sandal-wood in China appears to be principally for the incense used in the temples.

Gymnosperms.

Coniferæ.

Terebinthina Vulgaris.

Crude or Common Turpentine; F. Térebenthine commune; G. Gemeiner Terpenthin.

Botanical Origin—The trees which yield Common Turpentine may be considered in two groups, namely, European and American.

1. European—In Finland and Russia Proper, the Scotch Pine, Pinus sivestris L.; in Austria and Corsica, P. Laricio Poiret; and in South-western France, P. Pinaster Solander (P. maritima Poiret), extensively cultivated as the Pin maritime, yield turpentine in their respective countries.

2. American—In the United States, the conifers most important for terebinthinous products are the Swamp Pine, Pinus australis Michaux (P. palustris Mill.), and the Loblolly Pine, P. Tæda L.

History—The resin of pines and firs was well known to the ancients, who obtained it in much the same manner as that practised at the present day. The turpentine used in this country has for many years past been derived from North America. Up to the last century, both it and the substance called Common Frankincense were imported from France. The late civil war in the United States and the blockade of the Southern ports, occasioned a great scarcity of American turpentine; and terebinthinous substances from all other countries were poured into the London market. The actual supplies, however, were mainly furnished by France.

Kopp quotes a passage showing that the essential oil of turpentine was known to Marcus Græcus, who termed it Aqua ardens. This almost unknown personage is the reputed inventor of Greek Fire, a dreaded engine of destruction in mediæval warfare.

Secretion—The primary formation of resin-ducts in the bark of coniferous trees has been explained by Dippel, Müller, and Frank. The subsequent diffusion of the resinous juice through the heartwood, sapwood, and bark, has been elaborately investigated by Hugo von Mohl. From the various forms under which this diffusion exists in the different species have arisen the diverse methods of obtaining the terebinthinous resins.

Thus in the wood of the Silver Fir (Pinua Picea L.) resin-ducts are altogether wanting;—and led by experience, the Alpine peasant collects the turpentine of this tree by simply puncturing the little cavities which form under its bark. In the Scotch Pine (P. silvestris L.), they are more abundant in the wood than in the bark, a fact which might be anticipated by observing how rarely this tree exudes resin spontaneously.

Oil of turpentine, like volatile oils in general, undergoes on exposure to the air certain alterations giving rise to what is called resinification. The formic acid which is produced in small quantity during this change characterizes it as one of oxidation; the chief products however are not exactly known, and not one of them has been proved identical with any natural resin. The common assumption that resins are produced from volatile oils by simple oxidation, is consequently not yet entirely justified.

Extraction—In the United States turpentine is obtained to the largest extent from Pinus australis, of which tree there are vast forests, the piny woods or pine-barrens, extending from Virginia to the Mexican Gulf, especially through North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. But it is in North Carolina that the extraction of turpentine is principally carried on.

In the winter, i.e. from November to March, the negroes in a Turpentine Orchard, as the district of forest to be worked is called, are occupied in making in the trunks of the trees, cavities which are technically known as boxes. For this purpose a long narrow axe is used, and some skill is required to wield it properly. The boxes are made from 6 to 12 inches above the ground, and are shaped like a distended waistcoat-pocket, the bottom being about 4 inches below the lower lip, and 8 or 10 below the upper. On a tree of medium size, a box should be made to hold a quart. The less the axe approaches the centre of the tree the better, as vitality is the less endangered. An expert workman will make a box in less than 10 minutes. From one to four boxes are made in each tree, a few inches of bark being left between them. The greater number of trees from which turpentine is now obtained, are from 12 to 18 inches in diameter, and have three boxes each.

The boxes having been made, the bark and a little of the wood immediately beneath it, which are above the box, are hacked; and from this excoriation, the sap begins to flow about the middle of March, gradually filling the box. Each tree requires to be freshly hacked every 8 or 10 days, a very slight wound above the last being all that is needed. The hacking is carried on year after year, until it reaches 12 to 15 feet or more, ladders being used. The turpentine, which is called dip, is removed from the boxes by a spoon or ladle of peculiar form, and collected into barrels, which are made on the spot and are of very rude construction. The first year’s flow of a new tree, having but a small surface to traverse before it reaches the box, is of special goodness and is termed Virgin dip.

The turpentine which concretes upon the trunk is occasionally scraped off and barrelled by itself, and is known in the market as scrape, or by English druggists as Common Frankincense or Gum thus.

Although a large amount of turpentine is shipped to the northern ports for distillation, a still larger is distilled in the neighbourhood of the turpentine orchards. Copper stills are used, capable of containing 5 to 20 barrels of turpentine. The turpentine is distilled without water, the volatile oil as it flows from the worm being received in the barrel in which it is afterwards sent to market. When all the oil that can be profitably drawn off has been obtained, a spigot is removed from an opening in the bottom of the still, and the residual Rosin, appearing as a viscid fluid-like molasses, is allowed to flow out. Only the first qualities of rosin, as that obtained from Virgin dip, are generally considered worth saving, the less pure sorts being simply allowed to run to waste. When it is intended to save the rosin, the latter is drawn off into a vat of water, which separates the chips and other rubbish, and the rosin is then placed in barrels for the market. A North Carolina turpentine orchard will remain productive under ordinary treatment for fifty years.

The collection of turpentine in the departments of the Landes and Gironde in the south-west of France, is performed in a more rational manner than in America, inasmuch as the plan of making deep cavities in the tree for the purpose of receiving the resin, is avoided by the simple expedient of placing a suitable vessel beneath the lowest incision. The turpentine which concretes upon the stem is termed in France Galipot or Barras.

Description—Common turpentine is chiefly of two varieties, namely, American and Bordeaux; the first alone is commonly found in the English market.

American Turpentine—A viscid honey-like fluid, of yellowish colour, somewhat opaque, but becoming transparent by exposure to the air; it has an agreeable odour and warm bitterish taste. When long kept in a bottle, it is seen to separate into two layers, the upper clear and faintly fluorescent, the lower somewhat turbid or granular. When the latter portion is examined under the microscope, it is found to consist mainly of minute crystals of peculiar curved or bluntly elliptic form. These crystals are abietic acid; when the turpentine is warmed, the crystals are speedily dissolved.

Bordeaux Turpentine—in all essential particulars agrees with American Turpentine; it appears to separate rather more readily than the latter into two layers,—a transparent and an opaque or crystalline.

Chemical Composition—The turpentines are mixtures of resin and essential oil. The latter, which amounts to from 15 to 30 per cent., consists for the greater part of various hydrocarbons, corresponding to the formula C₁₀H₁₆. Many of the crude turpentine oils, and some of them even after rectification, are energetically acted on by metallic sodium. This reaction proves the presence of a certain quantity of oxygenated oils, not one of which has thus far been isolated.

The turpentine oils, although agreeing in composition, exhibit a series of physical differences according to their origin. One and the same tree, indeed, yields from its several organs oils of different properties. The boiling point varies between 152° and 172° C. The sp. gr. at mean temperatures ranges from 0·856 to 0·870. Greater differences are exhibited in the optical properties, some varieties of the oil turning the plane of polarization to the right, others to the left. This rotatory power differs in many cases from that of the turpentine from which the oil was derived. The odour of oil of turpentine varies with the species from which it has been obtained.

When crude turpentine is distilled with water, nearly the whole of the oil passes over, while the resin remains. This resin is called Colophony or Rosin. When it still contains a little water, it is distinguished in English trade as Yellow Rosin; when fully deprived of water, it becomes what is called Transparent Rosin. That of deeper colour acquired by a still longer application of heat, bears the name of Black Rosin.

Colophony softens at 80° C., and melts completely at 100° into a clear liquid. At about 150° it forms a somewhat darker liquid, but without undergoing a loss in weight; at higher temperatures, it gradually decomposes. Pure colophony has a sp. gr. of 1·07, and is homogeneous, transparent, amorphous, and very brittle. At temperatures between 15° and 20° C., it requires for solution 8 parts of dilute alcohol (0·883). On addition of a caustic alkali, it dissolves in spirit much more freely. It is plentifully soluble in acetone or benzol.

The composition of colophony agrees with the formula C₄₄H₆₂O₄. By shaking coarsely powdered colophony with warm dilute alcohol, it is converted into a crystalline body, Abietic Acid, C₄₄H₆₄O₅,—a result due simply to hydration. Under such treatment, colophony yields 80 to 90 per cent. of abietic acid, and therefore consists chiefly of the anhydride of that acid. This is probably the case with the resins of other conifers. The living tree contains only the anhydride, for the fresh resinous juice is clear and amorphous after the expulsion of the oil; and when exposed to the air it loses oil, takes up water and solidifies as the crystalline acid,—a change which may easily be traced by the aid of the microscope, in drops taken direct from the trunk. Amorphous colophony retains its transparency even in a moist atmosphere, and appears to be capable of passing into the state of abietic acid, only when the assumption of the needful molecule of water is aided, in nature by the presence of the essential oil, or artificially by that of alcohol.

Colophony when boiled with alkaline solutions forms greasy salts of abietic acid, the so-ccalled resin-soaps, which are used as additions to other soaps.

Siewert’s Silvic Acid is regarded by Maly (1864) as a product of the decomposition of abietic acid; and the Pimaric, Pinic and Silvic Acids of former investigators, as impure abietic acid. Pimaric acid however, which is the chief constituent of Galipot, appears to be decidedly different, so far as we can judge from the experiments of Duvernoy (1865) and of one of ourselves (F.).

Abietic acid, as well as the unaltered coniferous resins, deviate the ray of polarized light, whereas American colophony, dissolved in acetone, is devoid of optical power.

Commerce—The supplies of turpentine are chiefly derived from the United States, but the trade has undergone a great change, as shown by the following figures, which represent the quantities imported in the several years:—

1869 1870 1871 1872

60,468 cwt. 51,257 cwt. 2,231 cwt. 1,000 cwt.

This greatly diminished importation of the crude article is partially explained by a larger importation of Oil of Turpentine and Rosin; but the increase is by no means sufficient to account for the vast diminution indicated by the above figures. The quantities of these latter articles imported into the United Kingdom during the year 1872 were as follows:—Oil of Turpentine, 220,292 cwt., value £470,085, six-sevenths being furnished by the United States of America and the remainder chiefly by France. Rosin, 919,494 cwt., value £492,246; of this quantity, the United States supplied nine-tenths, and France the larger part of the remainder.

Uses—Turpentine, Common Frankincense and Colophony are ingredients of certain plasters and ointments. Oil of turpentine is occasionally administered internally as a vermifuge or diuretic, and applied externally as a stimulant. But these substances are immeasurably less important in medicine than in the arts.

Thus Americanum vel vulgare.

This substance, known among druggists as Common Frankincense or Gum Thus, is the resin which, as explained at p. 605, concretes upon the stems of the pines in the American turpentine orchards, and is there called Scrape. It corresponds to the Galipot or Barras of the French, which in old times supplied its place.

It is a semi-opaque, softish resin, of a pale yellow colour, smelling of turpentine; it is generally mixed with pine leaves, bits of wood and other impurities, so that it requires straining before it is used. By keeping, it becomes dry and brittle, of deeper colour and milder odour. Under the microscope, it exhibits a crystalline structure due to Abietic Acid, of which it chiefly consists. It is imported from America in barrels, but in insignificant quantities and only for the druggist’s use. Sometimes, however, it is distilled as common turpentine.

Dry pine resin, of which Common Frankincense is the type, evolves when heated an agreeable smell; hence in ancient times it was commonly used in English churches in place of the more costly olibanum. At present it is scarcely employed except in a few plasters.

Terebinthina Veneta.

Terebinthina Laricina; Venice Turpentine, Larch Turpentine; F. Térébenthine de Venise ou de Briançon, Térébenthine du mélèze; G. Venetianischer Terpenthin, Lärchen-Terpenthin.

Botanical Origin—Pinus Larix L. (Larix europæa DC.), a tall forest tree of the mountains of Southern Central Europe, from Dauphiny through the Alps to Styria and the Carpathians, ascending to an elevation of 3000 to 5500 feet above the sea-level. It is largely grown in plantations in England and also, since 1738, in Scotland.

History—The turpentine of the larch was known to Dioscorides as imported from the Alpine regions of Gaul. Pliny also was acquainted with it, for he correctly remarks that it does not harden. Galen in the 2nd century also mentions it, admitting that it may well be substituted for Chian turpentine (see p. 165), the true, legitimate Terebinthina. Yet even in the beginning of the 17th century many pharmacologists complained of such a substitution. Mattioli gave an account of the method of collecting it about Trent in the Tirol, by boring the trees to the centre, which is true to the present day. It used formerly to be exported from Venice, then the great emporium for drugs of all kinds; the turpentine may even at times have been collected in the territories of the Venetian republic. We find it expressly called Terebinthina Veneta by Guintherus of Andernach.

The name larch seems to belong to the turpentine rather than to the tree. Dioscorides says the resin is called by the natives λάρικα, and a similar name is mentioned by Galen. In Pasi’s Tariffa de pesi e misure, 1521 (see Appendix), we find “Termentina sive Larga,”—and larga is still an Italian name for larch turpentine. The peasants of the Southern Tirol call it Lerget, and in Switzerland the common name in German is Lörtsch.

Extraction—Larch turpentine is collected in the Tirol, chiefly about Mals, Meran, Botzen and Trent. A very small amount is obtained occasionally in the Valais in Switzerland, and in localities in Piedmont and France where the larch is found. The resin is obtained from the heartwood, by making in the spring a narrow cavity reaching to the centre of the stem at about a foot from the ground. This is then stopped up until the autumn of the same or of the following year, when it is opened and the resin taken out with an iron spoon. If only one hole is thus made, the tree yields about half a pound yearly without appreciable detriment. But if on the other hand a number of wide holes are made, and especially if they are left open, as was formerly the practice in the Piedmontese and French Alps, a larger product amounting to as much as 8 lb. is obtained annually, but the tree ceases to yield after some years, and its wood is much impaired in value.

Mohl, who witnessed the collection of this turpentine in the Southern Tirol, observed that when a growing larch stem was sawn through, the resin flowed most abundantly from the heartwood, and in smaller quantity, though somewhat more quickly, from the sapwood, and that the bark contained but few resin-ducts. The practice of closing the cavities is adopted, not only for the sake of preserving the wood and for the greater convenience of removing the turpentine, but also because it tends to maintain the transparency and purity of the latter.

Description—Venice turpentine is a thick, honey-like fluid, slightly turbid, yet not granular and crystalline; it has a pale yellowish colour and exhibits a slight fluorescence. Its odour resembles that of common turpentine, but is less powerful; its taste is bitter and aromatic. When exposed to the air, it thickens but slowly to a clear varnish, and hardens but very slowly when mixed with magnesia. Larch turpentine, though common on the Continent, is seldom imported into England, and the article sold for it is almost always spurious.

Chemical Composition—Larch turpentine dissolves in spirit of wine, forming a clear liquid which reddens litmus; hot water agitated with it also acquires a faint acid reaction, due to formic and probably also to succinic acid. Glacial acetic acid, amylic alcohol, and acetone mix with it perfectly. By distillation it yields on an average 15 per cent. of essential oil of the composition, C₁₀H₁₆, which boils at 157° C., and when saturated with dry hydrochloric acid gas, easily produces crystals of the compound C₁₀H₁₆ + HCl. The residual resin is soluble in two parts of warm alcohol of 75 per cent., and more copiously in concentrated alcohol.

Two parts of the turpentine diluted with one of benzol or acetone deviate the ray of polarized light 9·5° to the right. The essential oil deviates 6·4° to the left; the resin perfectly freed from volatile oil and dissolved in half its weight of acetone, deviates 12·6° to the right in a column 50 mm. long.

We have not succeeded in preparing a crystallized acid from the resin of Venice turpentine, although its composition according to Maly (1864) is the same as that of American colophony, which is easily transformed into crystallized abietic acid.

Uses—Venice turpentine appears to possess no medicinal properties that are not equally found in other substances of the same class, and as a medicine it has fallen into disuse. But in name at least it is in frequent requisition for horse and cattle medicines.

Adulteration—Alston (1740-60) said of Venice turpentine that it is seldom found in the shops,—a remark equally true at the present day, for but few druggists trouble themselves to procure it genuine. The Venice turpentine usually sold is an artificial mixture of common resin and oil of turpentine, which may be easily distinguished from the product of the larch by the facility with which it dries when spread on a piece of paper, and by its stronger turpentine smell.

Cortex Laricis.

Larch Bark.

Botanical Origin—Pinus Larix L.—see p. 609.

History—The bark of the larch has long been known to possess astringent properties; hence it has been used in tanning. Gerarde, who wrote near the close of the 16th century, likened it to that of the pine, which he described to be of a binding nature; but there is no evidence that it was an officinal drug.

About the year 1858 larch bark was recommended by Dr. Frizell of Dublin, and afterwards by other physicians, as a stimulating astringent and expectorant. In consequence of the favourable effects which have resulted from its use it has been included in the Additions to the Pharmacopœia of 1867.

Description—The bark that we have seen is in flattish pieces or large quills, externally reddish-brown. In those taken from older wood there is a large amount of an exfoliating corky coat, displaying as it is removed bright rosy tints, while the liber is of a different texture, slightly fibrous and whitish. The inner surface is smooth and of a pinkish-brown, or pale yellow. The bark breaks with a short fracture, exhaling an agreeable balsamic terebinthinous odour; it has a well-marked astringent taste. For medicinal use the inner bark is to be preferred.

Microscopic Structure—A transverse section exhibits resin-ducts, but far less numerous than in the bark of many allied trees. The medullary rays are not very distinct. Throughout the middle layer of the bark large isolated thick-walled cells of very irregular shape are scattered.

Chemical Composition—Larch bark has been examined by Stenhouse, who finds it to contain a considerable amount of a peculiar tannin, yielding olive-green precipitates with salts of iron. The same chemist also discovered in larch bark an interesting crystallizable substance called Larixin or Larixinic Acid, which has the composition C₁₀H₁₀O₅. It may be obtained by digesting the bark in water in 80° C. and evaporating the infusion to a syrupy consistence. From this, by still further cautious heating in a retort, the larixin may be distilled, during which operation some of it crystallizes on the inner surface of the receiver, the remainder being dissolved in the distilled liquor. From the latter it may be obtained in crystals by evaporation. The substance forms colourless crystals, sometimes as much as an inch long; it volatilizes even at 93° C., and melts at 153°. It requires about 88 parts of water for solution at 15° C., but more freely dissolves in boiling water or in alcohol. From ether, in which it is but sparingly soluble, it separates in brilliant crystals. The solutions have a bitterish astringent taste and a slightly acid reaction, and assume a purple hue on addition of ferric chloride. When a solution of baryta is added to a concentrated solution of larixin, the latter being in excess, a bulky gelatinous precipitate falls; it is readily soluble in boiling water and is deposited again on cooling. Stenhouse failed to obtain it either from the bark of Pinus Abies L., or from that of P. silvestris L.

Uses—Larch bark, chiefly in the form of tincture, has been prescribed to check profuse expectoration in cases of chronic bronchitis; it has also been found useful in arresting internal hæmorrhage.

Terebinthina Canadensis.

Balsamum Canadense; Canada Balsam, Canadian Turpentine; F. Térébenthine ou Baume de Canada; G. Canada Balsam.

Botanical Origin—Pinus balsamea L. (Abies balsamea Marshall), the Balsam Fir or Balm of Gilead Fir, a handsome tree, 20 to 40 feet high, with a trunk 6 to 12 inches in diameter, sometimes attaining still larger dimensions, growing in profusion in the Northern and Western United States of America, Nova Scotia and Canada, but not observed beyond 62° N. lat. It resembles the Silver Fir of Europe (Pinus Picea L.), but has the bracts short-pointed and the cones more acute at each end.

Canada balsam is also furnished by Pinus Fraseri Pursh, the Small-fruited or Double Balsam Fir, a tree found on the mountains of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and southward on the highest of the Alleghanies.

Pinus canadensis L. (Abies canadensis Michx.), the Hemlock Spruce or Pérusse, a large tree abundant in the same countries as P. balsamea, and extending throughout British America to Alaska, is said to yield a similar turpentine, which however has not yet been sufficiently examined. The Hemlock Spruce is of considerable importance on account of the resin collected from its trunk, and the essential oil distilled from its foliage, the latter operation being performed on a large scale in Madison County, New York. The inner bark of the tree is a valuable material for tanning.

History—The French, in whose possession Canada remained until the year 1763, were probably acquainted with Canada balsam long before this period. Yet no mention of it is found in Pomet’s work, but in 1759 it was at Strassburg a current article of the pharmacy. As to England, Lewis, in his History of the Materia Medica published in 1761, says that “an elegant balsam,” obtained from the Canada Fir, is sometimes brought into Europe under the name of Balsamum Canadense. Canada balsam was first introduced into the London Pharmacopœia in 1788. From the books of a London druggist, J. Gurney Bevan, we find that its wholesale price in 1776 was 4s., in 1788, 5s. per lb.

Description—Canada balsam is a transparent resin of honey-like consistence, and of a light straw-colour with a greenish tint. By keeping, it slowly becomes thicker and of a somewhat darker hue, but always retains its transparency. When carefully examined in direct sunlight, it exhibits a slight greenish fluorescence in the same degree as other turpentines or as copaiba; this optical power appears to increase if the balsam is exposed to a heat of about 200° C.

Canada balsam has a pleasant aromatic odour and bitterish, feebly acrid, not disagreeable taste. On account of its flavour it is sometimes called Balm of Gilead, but erroneously, as this latter is derived from a tree of the genus Balsamodendron growing in Arabia. We found a good commercial balsam to have a sp. gr. of 0·998 at 14·5° C., water at the same temperature being 1·000. Four parts, mixed with one of benzol and examined in a column of 50 mm. in length, deviated a ray of polarized light 2° to the right. The balsam is perfectly soluble in any proportion in chloroform, benzol, ether, or warm amylic alcohol; and the solution in each case reddens litmus. With sulphate of carbon it mixes readily, but the mixture is somewhat turbid. Glacial acetic acid, acetone or absolute alcohol dissolve the balsam partially, leaving, after ebullition and cooling, a considerable amount of amorphous residue. Colophony and Venice turpentine are completely dissolved by the liquids in question, as well as by spirit of wine containing 70 to 75 per cent. of alcohol.

Chemical Composition—Like all analogous exudations of the Coniferæ, Canada turpentine is a mixture of resins with an essential oil. If the latter is allowed to evaporate, the former are left as a transparent, somewhat tough and elastic mass. The proportion of the components is within certain limits, variable in different samples. The specimen before mentioned lost after an exposure in a steam-bath during several days, no less than 20 per cent. of volatile oil, or even 24 per cent. if the experiment was made on a very small scale, as with 20 grammes or less in a thin layer.

By distillation with water, it is not easy to obtain more than 17 to 18 per cent. of essential oil. The resin in this case is a tough, elastic, non-transparent mass, retaining obstinately a large proportion of water, which can only be removed by keeping it for some time at a temperature of 100°-176° C.

The oil as obtained by distillation with water is colourless, and has the odour of common oil of turpentine rather than the agreeable smell of the balsam; it consists of an oil, C₁₀H₁₆, mixed with an insignificant proportion of an oxygenated oil, the presence of which may be proved by the slight evolution of hydrogen on addition of metallic sodium, after the oil has been freed from water by contact with fused chloride of calcium. After this treatment, a small proportion begins to distil at about 160°, but by far the larger part boils at 167° C., a small portion only distilling at last at 170° and above. The oil obtained at 167°, examined under the conditions already mentioned, has a sp. gr. of 0·863, and the power of rotating a ray of polarized light 5·6° to the left. The portion distilling at 160° does not differ in this respect; but that passing over at 170°, deviates the ray 7·2° to the left. The oil readily dissolves a large proportion of glacial acetic acid; an equal weight of each mixes perfectly at about 54° C., but some acetic acid separates on cooling.

The essential oil of Canada balsam, saturated with dry hydrochloric acid, does not yield a solid crystallizable compound; but this is easily obtained on addition of fuming nitric acid and gently heating, when the inside of the retort becomes covered by sublimed crystals of C₁₀H₁₆ + HCl.

Thus this oil in its general characters bears a close resemblance to the essential oils of the cones of Pinus Picea L., and of the leaves of P. Pumilio Hänke, and to most of the French varieties of oil of turpentine, rather than to the American turpentine oils, which rotate to the right, and combine immediately with HCl to form a solid crystalline compound.

On the other hand, the resin of Canada balsam is dextrogyre: two parts of it, entirely deprived of essential oil and dissolved in one of benzol, deviating the ray 8·5° to the right. The optical powers of the two components (oil and resin) are therefore antagonistic.

The resin of Canada balsam consists however of two different bodies, 78·7 per cent. of it being soluble in boiling absolute alcohol, and 21·3 (in our specimen) remaining as an amorphous mass, readily soluble in ether. Neither the alcoholic nor the ethereal solution yields a crystalline residue if allowed to evaporate. They redden litmus, but we did not succeed in obtaining any crystallized resinous acid, crystals of which are formed if common turpentine or colophony is digested with dilute alcohol. Glacial acetic acid acts upon the resins like absolute alcohol. Caustic alkalis do not dissolve either the balsam or the resin; the former however is considerably thickened by incorporation with ⅕ of its weight of recently calcined magnesia. If the mixture, moistened with dilute alcohol, is kept at 93° C. for some days and frequently stirred, a mass of hard consistence, finally translucent, results. Caustic ammonia heated with the balsam in a closed bottle, forms a thick milky jelly, which does not afterwards separate.

Hence, according to our investigations, 100 parts of Canada turpentine consist of

Essential oil, C₁₀H₁₆}, with a very small

proportion of an oxygenated oil 24

Resin soluble in boiling alcohol 60

Resin soluble only in ether 16

The result of Wirzen’s examination of Canada balsam are not in complete accordance with those here stated. He found 16 per cent. of oil and three different amorphous resins, one of which had the composition of abietic acid.

Production and Commerce—Canada balsam is obtained either by puncturing the vesicles which form under the suberous envelope of the trunk and branches, and collecting their fluid contents in a bottle, or by making incisions. It is obtained principally in Lower Canada, and is shipped from Montreal and Quebec, in kegs or large barrels. In the neighbourhood of Quebec, about 2000 gallons (20,000 lb.) used to be collected annually; but in 1868, owing to distress among the farmers, the quantity obtained was unusually large, and it was estimated that nearly 7000 gallons would be exported to England and the United States. During a recent scarcity (1872-73) a sort of balsam from Oregon has been substituted in the American market for true Canada balsam.

Uses—The medicinal properties of Canada balsam resemble those of copaiba and other terebinthinous oleo-resins, yet it is now rarely employed as a remedy. The balsam is much valued for mounting objects for the microscope, as it remains constantly transparent and uncrystalline. It is also used for making varnish.

Terebinthina Argentoratensis.

Strassburg Turpentine; F. Térébenthine d’Alsace ou de Strasbourg, Térébenthine du sapin; G. Strassburger Terpenthin.

Botanical Origin—Pinus Picea L. (Abies pectinata DC.), the Silver Fir, a large handsome tree, growing in the mountainous parts of Middle and Southern Europe from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, and extending under a slightly different form (var. β. cephalonica) into continental Greece and the islands of Eubœa and Cephalonia.

History—Belon in his treatise De Arboribus coniferis (1553) described this turpentine, which is also briefly yet accurately noticed by Samuel Dale, a learned apothecary of London and the friend of Sloane and Ray. It had a place in the London Pharmacopœia until 1788, when it was omitted from the materia medica.

Extraction—The oleo-resin of P. Picea, like that of P. balsamea, is contained in little swellings of the bark of young stems, and is extracted by the tedious process of puncturing them and receiving in a suitable vessel the one or two drops which exude from each. It is still collected near Mutzig and Barr, in the Vosges (1878), though only to a very small extent.

Description—An authentic sample collected for one of us by the Surveyor of Forests in the Bernese Jura, Switzerland, resembles very closely Canada balsam, but is devoid of any distinct fluorescence. It has a light yellow colour, a very fragrant odour, more agreeable than that of Canada balsam, and is devoid of the acrid bitterish taste of the latter.

We found our specimen to have sp. gr. of distilled water. It deviates a ray of polarized light 3° to the left, if examined either pure or diluted with a fourth of its weight of benzol, in the manner described at p. 610. Our drug is soluble in the same liquids as the Canadian, yet is miscible with glacial acetic acid, absolute alcohol and acetone, without leaving any considerable flocculent residue. It is even soluble in spirit of wine, the solution being but very little turbid. The solutions have an acid reaction.

Chemical Composition—After the complete desiccation of a small quantity, there remained 72·4 per cent. of a brittle, transparent resin, soluble in glacial acetic acid, but not entirely in absolute alcohol or in acetone. By submitting half a pound of the turpentine to distillation with water, we obtained 24 per cent. of essential oil, the remaining resin being when cold perfectly friable. The fresh oil, purified by sodium, deviates the ray of polarized light to the left, whereas the remaining resin, dissolved in half its weight of benzol, shows a weak dextrogyre rotation. The oil boils at 163° C. After having kept it for two years and a half in a well-stopped bottle, we find that it has become considerably thicker and now deviates to the right. If saturated with dry hydrochloric acid, the oil does not yield a solid compound.

This oil has nearly the same agreeable odour as the crude oleo-resin, yet the essential oil of the cones of the same tree is still more fragrant. The latter is one of the most powerfully deviating oils, the rotation being 51° to the left, and it is consequently extremely different from the oil obtained from the turpentine of the stem, though its composition is represented by the same formula, C₁₀H₁₆.

A peculiar sugar called Abietite, nearly related to mannite but having the composition C₁₂H₁₆O₆, has been detected by Rochleder in the leaves of the Silver Fir.

Uses—Strassburg turpentine possesses the properties of common turpentine, with the advantage of a very agreeable odour. It was formerly held in great esteem, but has now become nearly forgotten.

Pix Burgundica.

Pix abietina; Burgundy Pitch; F. Poix de Bourgogne ou des Vosges, Poix jaune; G. Fichtenharz, Tannenharz.

Botanical Origin—Pinus Abies L. (Abies excelsa DC.), the Norway Spruce Fir, a noble tree attaining an elevation of 100-160 feet, widely distributed throughout Northern and the mountainous parts of Central Europe, but not indigenous to Great Britain, though extensively planted. In Russian Lapland it reaches at 68° N. lat. almost the extreme limit of tree-vegetation, while southward it extends to the Spanish Pyrenees. In the Alps it ascends to 6,000 feet above the level of the sea.

History—In accordance with the definition of the London Pharmacopœias and the custom of English druggists the name Burgundy Pitch is restricted to the product of the above-named species. The pharmacologists of France use an equivalent term with the same limitations; but in other parts of the Continent Pix Burgundica has a wider meaning, and is allowed to include the turpentines of other Coniferæ. We here employ it in the English sense.

Parkinson, an apothecary of London and herbarist to King Charles I., speaks of “Burgony Pitch” as a thing well known in his time. Dale in his Pharmacologia (1693) mentions Pix Burgundica as being imported into England from Germany, and it is also noticed by Salmon (1693), who says “it is brought to us out of Burgundy, Germany and other places near Strasburgh.”

Pomet, writing in Paris about the same period, discards the prefix Burgundy as a fiction, remarking that the best Poix grasse comes from Holland and Strassburg.

Whether this resin ever was collected in Burgundy we are unable to determine. It may probably have acquired the name through having been brought into commerce from Switzerland and Alsace by way of Franche Comté, otherwise called Comté de Bourgogne or Haute Bourgogne.

Burgundy pitch is enumerated among the materia medica of the London Pharmacopœia of 1677, and in every subsequent edition. In that of 1809 it was defined under the name of Pix arida, as the prepared resin of Pinus Abies.

Production—Burgundy pitch is produced in Finland, in the Black Forest in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Austria and Switzerland. On the estate of Baron Linder at Svarta near Helsingfors, it is obtained by melting the crude resin in contact with the vapour of water, and straining. The quantity annually produced there was stated in 1867 to be 35,000 kilogr. (689 cwt.); that afforded by an establishment at Ilm in the same country amounted to 80,000 kilogr. (1,575 cwt.).

In the neighbourhood of Oppenau and on the Kniebis mountain in the Grand Duchy of Baden the stems of the firs are wounded at equal distances by making perpendicular channels, 1½ inches wide and the same in depth. The resin which exudes from these channels is scraped off with an iron instrument made for the purpose, and purified by being melted in hot water and strained. This is performed in three or four small establishments at Oppenau and the neighbouring village of Löcherberg. In this state the resin, which is opaque and contains much moisture, is called Wasserharz. By further straining and evaporating a portion of the water its quality is improved.

The manufacture in that part of Germany is on the decline, partly in consequence of the timber being injured by the wounding of the trees, so that the collecting of resin is not permitted in the large forests belonging to the governments of Baden and Württemberg. We have had the opportunity of observing that in the establishments in question French turpentine or galipot, imported from Bordeaux, as well as American rosin or colophony, are used in quantities certainly exceeding that of the resin grown on the spot.

In the middle of the last century some Burgundy pitch was produced, according to Duhamel, in the present canton of Neuchâtel, but no such branch of industry is now pursued there, at least on a large scale. On the other hand, in the districts of Moutier and Delémont in the Bernese Jura this resin is still collected, though it is not known as Burgundy Pitch, but is termed simply Poix blanche (White Pitch). The surveyor of the forests of this district, which is one of the richest in Pinus Abies, has informed one of us that from 790 to 850 quintals are collected and exported to Basle, Zürich, Aarau and Vaud. The pitch is worth in loco (1868) 100 to 110 francs (£4 to £4 8s.) the bosse of 6 quintals. The quantities collected in other parts of Switzerland are even less considerable.

Description—Pure Burgundy pitch, of which we have numerous authentic specimens, is a rather opaque, yellowish-brown substance, hard and brittle when cold, yet gradually taking the form of the vessel in which it is kept. It is strongly adhesive, breaks with a clear conchoidal fracture, and has a very agreeable, aromatic odour, especially when heated. It does not exhibit a crystalline structure, although, as we have frequently observed, the resin on the stem of the tree is distinctly crystalline.

Burgundy pitch is readily soluble in glacial acetic acid, acetone, absolute alcohol, and even in alcohol of 75 per cent. (sp. gr. 0·860), yet its solubility in these liquids is considerably altered by the presence of water or essential oil; and still more by the formation of abietic acid in the resin itself. The same influences also affect the melting point.

The crude resin of Pinus Abies, deprived of essential oil and dissolved in one part of absolute alcohol, was found to deviate a ray of polarized light 3° to the left, in a column of 50 mm.; the essential oil deviated 8·5° to the same direction. The oil contains a small amount of an oxygenated oil. After treatment with sodium the oil which remains does not form a solid compound if saturated with hydrochloric acid.

Chemical Composition—The investigations of Maly mentioned at p. 607 afford a satisfactory elucidation of the chemical properties of the pinic resinous exudations. They all, according to that chemist, are mixtures of the same amorphous resin, C₄₄H₆₂O₄, with essential oils of the composition C₁₀H₁₆. These terebinthinous juices are collected and sold either in their natural state as turpentine, or deprived more or less completely of their volatile oil, in which condition they are represented by Burgundy Pitch, and finally by rosin or colophony.

The turpentines flowing down the stems of the trees gradually lose their transparency if allowed to dry slowly in the air, becoming at the same time harder and somewhat granular. This alteration is due to the incorporation of water, which at last is not only mixed with the components of the resinous juice, but to some extent combines chemically with the resin so as to transform it into a crystalline body having the characters of an acid. The fact is easily observed if clear drops of the turpentine of Pinus silvestris, P. Abies or P. Picea are collected in vials and kept perfectly dry. Thus treated these turpentines remain transparent, but the addition of water causes after a short time the formation of microscopic crystals of abietic acid, rendering them more or less opaque.

If turpentines are collected before they lose their essential oil by evaporation and oxidation, and before they have become crystalline, they can be retained perfectly transparent by distilling off the volatile oil without water. The distillation being most commonly carried on with water, the remaining resin is opaque.

Maly is of opinion that the same amorphous resin occurs in all the Coniferæ, and that it yields by hydration the same acid, namely Abietic, which has been described by former chemists as Pinic, Silvic, and Pimaric acids, all of which indeed are admitted to have the same composition. We must however remember that several sorts of turpentine, as Canada Balsam, appear incapable, according to our experiments, of yielding any crystalline resinoid compound whatever; and that their amorphous resin being but partially soluble is certainly not a homogeneous substance.

The crystals as formed naturally in the common turpentines do not exhibit precisely the same forms as those obtained artificially when the resins are agitated with warm diluted alcohol, as in the preparation of abietic acid. As to Pimaric Acid, we have prepared it in quantity from galipot, the resin of Pinus Pinaster, but have always found its crystalline character entirely different from that of abietic acid.

We are inclined, therefore, to think that the composition of the resins of Coniferæ is not so uniform as Maly suggests. The remarkable variety of their essential oils is a fact which seems in favour of our view.

Uses—Burgundy pitch is prescribed as an ingredient of plasters, and thus employed is useful as a mild stimulant. In Germany it has some economic applications, one of which is the lining of beer casks, for which purpose a composition is used called Brauerpech (brewers’ pitch), made by mixing it with colophony or galipot.

Adulteration—No drug is the subject of more adulteration than Burgundy pitch, so much so that the very name is understood by some pharmacologists to be that of a manufactured compound. The substance commonly sold in England is made by melting together colophony with palm oil or some other fat, water being stirred in to render the mixture opaque. In appearance it is very variable, different samples presenting different shades of bright or dull yellow or yellowish-brown. Many when broken exhibit numerous cavities containing air or water; all are more or less opaque, becoming in time transparent on the surface by the loss of water. Artificial Burgundy pitch is offered for sale in bladders; it has a weak terebinthinous odour, and is devoid of the peculiar fragrance of the genuine. The presence of a fatty oil is easily discovered by treatment with double its weight of glacial acetic acid, which forms a turbid mixture, separating by repose into two layers, the upper being oily.

Pix Liquida.

Wood-Tar; F. Goudron végétal, Poix liquide; G. Holztheer, Fichtentheer.

Botanical Origin—Tar is obtained by submitting the wood of the stems and roots of coniferous trees to dry or destructive distillation. That found in commerce is produced in Northern Europe, chiefly from two species, namely Pinus silvestris L. and P. Ledebourii Endl. (Larix sibirica Ledeb.). These trees constitute the vast forests of Arctic Europe and Asia.

History—Theophrastus gives a circumstantial description of the preparation of tar, which applies with considerable accuracy to the processes still practised in those districts where no improved methods of manufacture have yet been introduced.

Production—The great bulk of the vegetable tar used in Europe, and known in commerce as Archangel or Stockholm Tar, is prepared in Finland, Central and Northern Russia, and Sweden.

The process is conducted in the following manner:—vast stacks of pine wood consisting chiefly of the roots and lower portions of the trunks (the more valuable parts of the trees being used as timber), and containing as much as 30,000 to 70,000 cubic feet, are carefully packed together, and then covered with a thick layer of turf, moss, and earth, beaten down with heavy stampers. The whole stack of billets is constructed over a conical or funnel-like cavity made in the ground, if possible on the side of a hill, this arrangement being adopted for the purpose of carrying on a downward distillation. Fire being applied the combustion of the mass of wood has to be carried on very slowly and without flame in order to obtain the due amount of tar and a charcoal of good quality. During its progress the products, chiefly tar, collect in the funnel-like cavity, from which they are discharged by a tube into a cast-iron pan placed beneath the stack, or simply into hollow tree trunks. The time required for combustion varies from one to four weeks, according to the size of the stack.

During the last few years this rude process has been improved and accelerated by the introduction of rationally constructed wrought-iron stills, furnished with refrigerating condensers, as proposed in Russia by Hessel in 1861. By this mode of manufacture the yield in tar of pine wood is about 14 per cent. from stems, dried by exposure to the open air; and 16 to 20 per cent. from roots. Large quantities of pyroligneous acid and oil of turpentine are at the same time secured. The wood of the beech and of other non-coniferous trees appears not to afford more than 10 per cent. of tar, while turf yields only from 3 to 9 per cent.

Description—The numerous empyreumatic products which result from the destructive distillation of pine wood, and which we call tar, constitute a dark brown or blackish semi-liquid substance, of peculiar odour and sharp taste. When deprived of water and seen in thin layers, tar is perfectly transparent. The magnifying glass shows some of the varieties to contain colourless crystals of Pyrocatechin, scattered throughout the dark viscid substance, and to these tar owes its occasionally granular, honey-like consistence. A gentle heat causes them to melt and mix with the other constituents.

True vegetable tar has always a decidedly acid reaction. It is readily miscible with alcohol, glacial acetic acid, ether, fixed and volatile oils, chloroform, benzol, amylic alcohol or acetone. It is soluble in caustic alkaline solutions, but not in pure water or watery liquids. The sp. gr. of tar from the roots of conifers is about 1·06 (Hessel) yet at a somewhat elevated temperature, it becomes lighter than warm water.

Water agitated with tar acquires a light yellowish tint, and the taste and odour of tar, as well as an acid reaction. On evaporation the solution becomes brown, and at last microscopic crystals are obtained with a brown residue like tar itself, which is no longer soluble in water. A microscopical examination of tar which has been exhausted with water, shows that all crystals have disappeared.

Chemical Composition—Dry wood may be heated to about 150° C. without decomposition; but at a more elevated temperature, it commences to undergo a change, yielding a large number of products, the nature and comparative quantity of which depend upon circumstances. If the process is carried on in a closed vessel, a residue will be got which has more or less resemblance to coal. By heating fir-wood enclosed with some water to 400° C., Daubrée (1857) obtained a coal-like substance, which yielded by a subsequent increase of temperature scarcely any volatile products.

The results are widely different if a process is followed which permits the formation of volatile bodies; and these substances are formed in largest proportion, if the heat acts quickly and intensely. At lower degrees of heat, more charcoal results and more water is evolved.

Among the volatile products of destructive distillation, those alone which are condensed at the ordinary temperature of the air are of pharmaceutical interest; and of these, chiefly the portion not soluble in water, or that which is called Tar or Liquid Pitch. The aqueous portion of the products consist principally of empyreumatic acetic acid, to which tar owes its acid reaction.

The tissue of wood is chiefly formed of cellulose, intimately combined with a saccharine substance, which may be separated if the wood is boiled with dilute acids. The remaining cellulose is however not yet pure, but is still united to a substance which, as shown by Erdmann, is capable of yielding pyrocatechin.

It is well known that sugar subjected to an elevated temperature, yields a series of pyrogenous products; and the same fact is observed if purified cellulose is heated in similar manner. But for tar-making, wood is preferred which is impregnated with resins and essential oils, and these latter furnish another series of empyreumatic products. From these circumstances, the components of wood-tar are of an extremely complicated character, which is still more the case when other woods than those of conifers form part of the material submitted to distillation. In the case of beech-wood, Creasote is formed, which is obtained only in very small quantity from the Coniferæ. Volatile alkaloids and carbolic acid, which are largely produced in the destructive distillation of coal, appear not to be present in wood-tar.

The components of the latter may be considered under two heads:—first, the lighter aqueous portion, which separates from the other products of distillation, forming what is called Impure Pyroligneous Acid. This contains chiefly acetic acid and Methyl Alcohol or Wood Naphtha, CH₄O; Acetone, C₃H₆O; besides other liquid products abundantly soluble in water and acetic acid. In this portion, some pyrocatechin also occurs.

The second class of pyrogenous products of wood consists of a homologous series of liquid hydrocarbons, sparingly soluble in water, and which therefore are chiefly retained in the heavy layer below the pyroligneous acid, forming the proper wood-tar. The liquid in question furnishes Toluol or Toluene, C₇H₈ (boiling point 114° C.), Xylole C₈H₁₀, and several other analogous substances.

If tar is redistilled, an elevated temperature being used towards the end of the process, some crystallizable solid bodies are obtained, the most important of which is that called Paraffin, having the formula CₙH₍₂ₙ₊₂₎, n varying from 20 to 24.

The crystals already mentioned as occurring in tar are Pyrocatechin. They are easily sublimed at some degrees above their fusing point (104° C.), or removed by acetic acid, in which as well as in water they are readily soluble. Hence in some sorts of tar this substance does not occur, it having probably been removed by water.

Pyrocatechin, C₆H₄(OH)₂, can be obtained by the destructive distillation of many other substances, as catechu, kino, the extracts of rhatany and bearberry leaves, and other extracts rich in that form of tannin which produces greenish (not blue-black) precipitates in salts of iron. It is extracted from the granular sorts of wood-tar, by exposing them at a proper temperature to a current of heated dry air, or by exhausting them with water. Ether when shaken with the concentrated aqueous solution and left to evaporate, leaves colourless crystals of pyrocatechin which after purification are devoid of acid reaction. They have a peculiar burning persistent taste, and are very pungent and irritating when allowed to evaporate. A solution of pyrocatechin yields with perchloride of iron a dark green coloration changing to black after a few moments, and becoming red on the addition of potash. This mixture finally acquires a magnificent violet hue, like a solution of alkaline permanganate. No alteration is produced in a solution of pyrocatechin by protosalts of iron.

Among the few medicinal preparations of tar, is Tar Water, called Aqua vel Liquor Picis, made by agitating wood-tar with water. The presence in it of pyrocatechin is easily proved by the above-mentioned reactions, or by a few drops of red chromate of potassium, which produces a brownish black colouration. It may hence be inferred that pyrocatechin is perhaps the active ingredient in tar-water, and that for making this liquid the granular, crystalline sorts of tar should be preferred.

Commerce—Tar as well as pitch is manufactured in Finland, and shipped from various ports in the Gulf of Bothnia, as Uleaborg, Gamla Carleby, Jacobstad, Ny Carleby and Christinestad; also from Archangel and Onega on the White Sea. Some tar is also produced in Volhynia, and finds its way by the Dnieper to the Black Sea.

The North of Sweden likewise produces tar, chiefly about Umea and Lulea, the distillation being now performed in well-constructed apparatus of iron.

The pine forests of North America afford tar and pitch. Wilmington in North Carolina exported in 1871, 25,260 barrels of tar, and 3788 barrels of pitch.

The imports of tar into the United Kingdom in 1872, were 189,291 barrels, valued at £218,339. Of this quantity 145,483 barrels were shipped from the northern ports of Russia.

The barrels in which tar arrives hold about 30 gallons. Smaller sized vessels termed half-barrels are also used, though less frequently.

Uses—In medicine of no great importance: an ointment of tar is a common remedy in cutaneous diseases, and tar water is sometimes taken internally. The consumption of tar in shipbuilding and for the preservation of fences, sufficiently explains the large importations.

Other Varieties of Tar.

Juniper Tar, Pyroleum Oxycedri, Oleum Juniperi empyreumaticum, Oleum Cadinum, Huile de Cade.—This is a tar originally obtained by the destructive distillation of the wood of the Cade, Juniperus Oxycedrus L., a shrub or small tree, native of the countries bordering the Mediterranean. It was for centuries used in the South of France as an external remedy, chiefly for domestic animals, but had fallen into complete oblivion until ten years ago, when it began to be prescribed in skin complaints.

The Huile de Cade now in use, is transparent and devoid of crystals. It is somewhat thinner than Swedish tar, but closely agrees with it in other respects. It is imported from the Continent, but where made and from what wood we know not. Huile de Cade is mentioned by Olivier de Serres, a celebrated French writer on agriculture of the 16th century; it is named by Parkinson in 1640; also by Pomet, in whose time (1694) it was rarely genuine, common tar being sold in its place.

Beech Tar—Tar is also manufactured from the wood of the beech, Fagus silvatica L., and has a place in some pharmacopœias as the best source of creasote.

Birch Tar—is made to a small extent in Russia, where it is called Dagget, from the wood of Betula alba L. It contains an abundance of pyrocatechin, and is esteemed on account of its peculiar odour well known in the Russia leather. A purified oil of birch tar is sold by the Leipzig distillers.

Pix Nigra.

Pix sicca vel solida vel navalis; Pitch, Black Pitch; F. Poix noire; G. Schiffspech, Schusterpech, Schwarzes Pech.

Botanical Origin—see Pix liquida.

Production—When the crude products of the dry distillation of pine wood, as described in the previous article, are submitted to re-distillation, the following results are obtained. The first 10 to 15 per cent. of volatile matter consists chiefly of methylic alcohol and acetone. A higher temperature causes the vaporization of the acetic acid, while the still retains the tar. This last, subjected to a further distillation, may be separated into a liquid portion called Oil of Tar (Oleum Picis liquidæ), and a residuum which, on cooling, hardens and forms the product under notice, namely Black Pitch. Again heated to a very elevated temperature, it is capable of yielding paraffin, anthracene and naphthalene.

Description—Pitch is an opaque-looking, black substance, breaking with a shining conchoidal fracture, the fragments showing at the thin translucent edges a brownish colour. No trace of distinct crystallization is observable when very thin fragments are examined, even by polarized light. Pitch has a peculiar disagreeable odour, rather different from that of tar. Its alcoholic solution has a feeble taste somewhat like that of tar, but pitch itself when masticated is almost tasteless. It softens by the warmth of the hand, and may then be kneaded. It readily dissolves in those liquids which are solvents of tar. Alcohol of 75 per cent. acts freely on it, leaving behind in small proportion a dark viscid residue. The brown solution reddens litmus paper, and yields a dingy brownish precipitate with perchloride of iron, and whitish precipitates with alcoholic solution of neutral acetate of lead, or with pure water. Pitch dissolves in solution of caustic potash, evolving an offensive odour.

Chemical Composition—From the method in which pitch is prepared, we may infer that it contains some of the less volatile and less crystallizable compounds found in tar. Ekstrand (1875) extracted from it Retene, C₁₈H₁₈, a colourless, inodorous crystalline substance, melting at 90° C.

The pitch of beech-wood boiled with a caustic alkali, yields a fœtid volatile oil; when this solution is acidulated, fatty volatile acids are evolved. These principles however have not yet been isolated either from the pitch of pine or beech. The whitish compound formed by acetate of lead in an alcoholic solution of pitch deserves investigation, and perhaps might be the starting point for acquiring a better knowledge of the chemistry of this substance.

Commerce—The same countries that produce tar produce also pitch. The quantity of the latter imported into the United Kingdom during 1872 was 35,482 cwt., four-fifths of which were supplied by Russia. Pitch is also manufactured from tar in Great Britain.

Uses—Pitch is occasionally administered in the form of pills, or externally as an ointment; but its medicinal properties are, to say the least, very questionable.

Fructus Juniperi.

Baccæ Galbuli Juniperi; Juniper Berries; F. Baies de Genièvre; G. Wacholderbeeren, Kaddigbeeren.

Botanical Origin—Juniperis communis L., a diœcious evergreen, occurring in Europe from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions, throughout Russian Asia as far as Sachalin, and in the north-western Himalaya, where it is ascending in Kashmir at 5400 feet, in Lahoul to 12,500, on the upper Biās and in Gurhwal to 14,000 feet. It abounds in the islands of Newfoundland, Saint Pierre, and Miquelon, and is also found in Continental North America. Dispersed over this vast area the Common Juniper presents several varieties. In England and in the greater part of Europe it forms a bushy shrub from 2 to 6 feet high, but in the interior of Norway and Sweden it becomes a small forest tree of 30 to 36 feet, often attaining an age of hundreds of years. In high mountain regions of temperate Europe and in Arctic countries it assumes a decumbent habit (Juniperus nana Willd.), rising only a few inches above the soil.

History—The fruits of Juniper, though by no means exclusively those of J. communis, were commonly used in medicine by the Greek and Roman as well as by the Arabian physicians; they had a place among the drugs of the Welsh “physicians of Myddvai” (see Appendix), and are mentioned in some of the earliest printed herbals. The oil was distilled by Schnellenberg as early as 1546.

Popular uses were formerly assigned in various parts of Europe to Juniper berries. They were employed as a spice to food; and a spirit, of which wormwood was an ingredient, was obtained from them by fermentation and distillation. The spirit called in French Genièvre became known in English as Geneva, a name subsequently contracted into Gin.

Description—The flowers form minute axillary catkins; those of the female plant consist of 3 to 5 whorls of imbricated bracts. Of these the uppermost three soon become fleshy and scale-like, and alternate with three upright ovules having an open pore at the apex. After the flowers have faded these three fleshy bracts grow together to form a berry-like fruit termed a galbulus, which encloses three seeds. The three points and sutures of the fruit-scales are conspicuous in the upper part of the young fruit; but after maturity the sutures alone are visible, forming a depressed mark at its summit. A small point, surrounded by two or three trios of minute bracts, indicates the base of the fruit.

This fruit or pseudo-berry remains ovate and green during its first year, and it is not until the second autumn that it becomes ripe. It is then spherical, ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch in diameter, of a deep purplish colour, with a blue-grey bloom. Its internal structure may be thus described:—beneath the thin epicarp there is a loose yellowish-brown sarcocarp, enclosing large cavities, the oil-ducts; the three hard seeds lying close together, triangular and sharp-edged at the top, are attached to the sarcocarp at their outer sides, and only as far as the lower half. The upper half, which is free, is covered by a thin membrane. In the longitudinal furrows of the hard testa towards the lower half of the seed are small prominent sacs growing out into the sarcocarp. Each seed bears on its inner side 1 or 2, and on its convex outer surface 4 to 8 of these sacs, which in old fruits contain the resinified oil in an amorphous colourless state.

Juniper berries when crushed have an aromatic odour, and a spicy, sweetish, terebinthinous taste.

Microscopic Structure—The outer layer of the fruit consists of a colourless transparent cuticle, which covers a few rows of large cubic or tabular cells having thick, brown, porous walls. These cells contain a dark granular substance and masses of resin. The sarcocarp, which in the ripe state consists of large, elliptic, thin-walled, loosely coherent cells, contains chlorophyll, drops of essential oil, and a crystalline substance soluble in alcohol,—no doubt a stearoptene. Before maturity it likewise contains starch granules and large oil-cells. This tissue is traversed by very small vascular bundles containing annulated and dotted vessels.

Chemical Composition—The most important constituent of juniper berries is the volatile oil, obtainable to the extent of 0·4 to 1·2 per cent. The latter amount is obtained from Hungarian, 0·7 per cent. from German fruits. It is a mixture of levogyre oils, the one of which having the composition C₁₀H₁₆ boils at 155° C.; the prevailing portion of the oil, boiling at about 200°, consists of hydrocarbons, which are polymeric with terpene, C₁₀H₁₆. The crude oil as distilled by us deviated 3°·5 to the left in a column of 50 mm.

By passing nitrosyl chloride gas, NOCl, into it, Tilden (1877) obtained from the portion boiling below 160° the crystallized compound C₁₀H₁₆(NOCl), which is yielded by all the terpenes.

Another important constituent of juniper berries is the glucose, of which Trommsdorff (1822) obtained 33 per cent., while Donath (1873) found 41·9, and Ritthausen (1877) not more than 16 per cent. in the berries deprived of water. Of albuminoid substances about 5 per cent. are present, of inorganic matters 3 to 4 per cent. The fruit, moreover, contains also according to Donath small amounts of formic, acetic, and malic acids, besides resin.

Collection and Commerce—Juniper berries are largely collected in Savoy, and in the departments of the Doubs and Jura in France, whence they find their way to the hands of the Geneva druggists. They are also gathered in Austria, the South of France and Italy. In Hamburg price-currents they are quoted as German and Italian. The largest supplies are apparently furnished by Hungaria.

Uses—The berries and the essential oil obtained from them are reputed diuretic, yet are not often prescribed in English medicine.

Herba Sabinæ.

Cacumina vel Summitates Sabinæ; Savin or Savine; F. Sabine; G. Sevenkraut.

Botanical Origin—Juniperus Sabina L., a woody evergreen shrub, usually of small size and low-growing, spreading habit, but in some localities erect and arborescent.

It occurs in the Southern Alps of Austria (Tirol) and Switzerland (Visp or Viège and Stalden in the Valais, also in Grisons and Vaud), and in the adjacent mountains of France and Piedmont, ascending to elevations of 4,000 to 5,000 feet. It is also found in the Pyrenees, Central Spain, Italy and the Crimea; likewise in the Caucasus, where it reaches 12,000 feet above the sea-level. Eastward it extends to the Elburs range, south of the Caspian, and throughout Southern Siberia, where it ascends in the Balkhasch and Alatau mountains to 8,600 feet. In North America it has been gathered on the banks of the river Saskatchewan, at Lake Huron, in Newfoundland, and in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There are, however, a few very closely allied species which may occasionally have been confounded with savin.

History—Savin is mentioned as a veterinary drug by Marcus Porcius Cato, a Roman writer on husbandry who flourished in the second century b.c.; and it was well known to Dioscorides (under the name of βρἀθυ) and Pliny. The plant, which is frequently named in the early English leech-books written before the Norman Conquest, may probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. Charlemagne, a.d. 812, ordered that it should be cultivated on the imperial farms of Central Europe. Its virtues as a stimulating application to wounds and ulcers are noticed in the verses of Macer Floridus, composed in the 10th century.

Description—The medicinal part of savin is the young and tender green shoots, stripped from the more woody twigs and branches. These are clothed with minute scale-like rhomboid leaves, arranged alternately in opposite pairs. On the younger twigs they are closely adpressed, thick, concave, rounded on the back, in the middle of which is a conspicuous depressed oil gland. As the shoots grow older the leaves become more pointed and divergent from the stem. Savin evolves, when rubbed or bruised, a strong and not disagreeable odour. The blackish fruit or galbulus resembling a small berry, ²/₁₀ of an inch in diameter, grows on a short recurved stalk, and is covered with a blue bloom. It is globular, dry, but abounding in essential oil, and contains 1 to 4 little bony nuts.

To mycologists, Juniperus Sabina, at least in the cultivated state, is interesting on account of the parasitic fungus Podisoma fuscum Duby, the mycelium of which produces, on the leaves of the pear-trees, the so-called Roestelia cancellata Rebentisch.

Chemistry—The odour of savin is due to an essential oil, of which the fresh tops afford 2 to 4 per cent., and the berries about 10 per cent. Examined in a column 50 millimetres long it was found to deviate the ray of polarized light 27° to the right, the oil used having been distilled by one of us in London from the fresh plant cultivated at Mitcham. The same result was obtained from the oil abstracted ten years previously from savin collected wild on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. We find that, by the prolonged action of the air, if the oil is kept in a vessel not carefully closed, the rotatory power after the lapse of years is greatly reduced. Savin oil, according to Tilden (1877), yields a small amount of an oil boiling at 160°, which answers to the formula C₁₀H₁₆O. The greater part of the oil was found by that chemist to boil above 200° C. Tilden asserts that no terpene is present in the oil of savin; we have not been able to obtain from it a crystallized hydrochloride. Savin tops contain traces of tannic matter.

Uses—Savin is a powerful uterine stimulant, producing in overdoses very serious effects. It is but rarely administered internally. An ointment of savin, which from the chlorophyll it contains is of a fine green colour, is used as a stimulating dressing for blisters.

Substitutes—There are several species of juniper which have a considerable resemblance to savin; and one of them, commonly grown in gardens and shrubberies, is sometimes mistaken for it. This is Juniperus virginiana L., the Red Cedar or Savin of North America. In its native country it is a tree, attaining a height of 50 feet or more, but in Britain it is seldom more than a large shrub, of loose spreading growth, very different from the low, compact habit of savin. The foliage is of two sorts, consisting either of minute, scale-like, rhomboid leaves like those of savin, more rarely of elongated, sharp, divergent leaves a quarter of an inch in length, resembling those of common Juniper. Both forms often occur on the same branch. The plant is much less rich in essential oil than true savin, for which it is sometimes substituted in the United States.

The foliage of Juniperus phœnicea L., a Mediterranean species, has some resemblance to savin for which it is said to be sometimes substituted, but it is quite destitute of the peculiar odour of the latter. The specific name of the former alludes to its red fruit, from ϕοινίκιος, purple.

Monocotyledons.

Cannaceæ.

Amylum Marantæ.

Arrowroot.

Botanical Origin—Maranta arundinacea L.—An herbaceous branching plant, 4 to 6 feet high, with ovate-lanceolate, puberulous or nearly glabrous leaves, and small white flowers, solitary or in lax racemes. It is a native of the tropical parts of America from Mexico to Brazil, and of the West Indian Islands; and under the slightly different form known as M. indica Tussac, it occurs in Bengal, Java and the Philippines. This Asiatic variety is now found in the West Indies and Tropical America, but apparently as an introduced plant.

History—The history of arrowroot is comparatively recent. Passing over some early references of French writers on the West Indies to an Herbe aux flèches, which plant it is impossible to identify with Maranta, we find in Sloane’s catalogue of Jamaica plants (1696), Canna Indica radice alba alexipharmaca. This plant, discovered in Dominica, was sent thence to Barbadoes and subsequently to Jamaica, it being, says Sloane, “very much esteemed for its alexipharmack qualities.” It was observed, he adds, that the native Indians used the root of the plant with success against the poison of their arrows, “by only mashing and applying it to the poison’d wounds”: and further, that it cures the poison of the manchineel (Hippomane Mancinella L.), of the wasps of Guadaloupe, and even stops “a begun gangreen.”

Patrick Browne (1756) notices the reputed alexipharmic virtues of Maranta, which was then cultivated in many gardens in Jamaica, and says that the root “washed, pounded fine and bleached, makes a fine flour and starch”—sometimes used as food when provisions are scarce.

Hughes, when writing of Barbadoes in 1750, describes arrowroot as a very useful plant, the juice mixed with water and drunk being regarded as “a preservative against any poison of an hot nature”; while from the root the finest starch is made, far excelling that of wheat. The properties of Maranta arundinacea as a counter-poison are insisted upon at some length by Lunan, who concludes his notice of the plant by detailing the process for extracting starch from the rhizome.

Arrowroot came into use in England about the commencement of the present century, the supplies being obtained, as it would appear, from Jamaica.

The statements of Sloane, which are confirmed by Browne and Lunan, plainly indicate the origin and meaning of the word arrowroot, and disprove the notion of the learned C. F. Ph. von Martius (1867) that the name is derived from that of the Arnac or Aroaquis Indians of South America, who call the finest sort of fecula they obtain from the Mandioc Aru-aru. It is true that Maranta arundinacea is known at the present day in Brazil as Araruta, but the name is certainly a corruption of the English word arrowroot, the plant according to general report having been introduced.

Manufacture—For the production of arrowroot, the rhizomes are dug up after the plant has attained its complete maturity, which in Georgia is at the beginning of winter. The scales which cover them are removed and the rhizomes washed; the latter are then ground in a mill, and the pulp is washed on sieves, or in washing machines constructed for the purpose, in order to remove from it the starch. This is allowed to settle down in pure water, is then drained and finally dried with a gentle heat. Instead of being crushed in a mill, the rhizomes are sometimes grated to a pulp by a rasping machine.

In all stages of the process for making arrowroot, nice precautions have to be taken to avoid contamination with dust, iron mould, insects, or anything which can impart colour or taste to the product. The rhizome contains about 68 per cent. of water, and yields about a fifth of its weight of starch.

Description—Arrowroot is a brilliant white, insipid, inodorous, powder, more or less aggregated into lumps which seldom exceed a pea in size; when pressed it emits a slight crackling sound. It exhibits the general properties of starch, consisting entirely of granules which are subspherical, or broadly and irregularly egg-shaped; when seen in water they show a distinct stratification in the form of fine concentric rings around a small star-like hilum. They have a diameter of 5 to 7 mkm. when observed in the air or under benzol. If the water in which they lie be cautiously heated on the object-stage of the microscope, the tumefaction of the granules will be found to begin exactly at 70° C. Heated to 100° C. with 20 parts of distilled water, arrowroot yields a semi-transparent jelly of somewhat earthy taste and smell. By hydrochloric acid of sp. gr. 1·06, arrowroot is but imperfectly dissolved at 40° C.

The specific gravity of all varieties of starch is affected by the water which they retain at the ordinary temperature of the air. Arrowroot after prolonged exposure to an atmosphere of average moisture, and then kept at 100° C. till its weight was constant, was found to have lost 13·3 per cent. of water. On subsequent exposure to the air, it regained its former proportion of water.

Weighed in any liquid which is entirely devoid of action on starch, as petroleum or benzol, the sp. gr. of arrowroot was found by one of us to be 1·504; but 1·565 when the powder had been previously dried at 100° C.

Microscopic Structure of Arrowroot and of Starch in general—The granules are built up of layers,—a structure which may be rendered evident by the gradual action of chloride of calcium, chromic acid, or an ammoniacal solution of cupric oxide. When one of these liquids in a proper state of dilution is made to act upon starch, or when for that purpose a liquid is chosen which does not act upon it energetically, such as diastase, bile, pepsin, or saliva, it is easy to obtain a residue, which according to Nägeli, is no longer capable of swelling up in boiling water, nor is immediately turned blue by iodine, except on the addition of sulphuric acid; but which is dissolved by ammoniacal cupric oxide. These are the essential properties of cellulose; and this residue has been regarded as such by Nägeli, while the dissolved portion has been distinguished as Granulose (Maschke, 1852).

C. Nägeli in his important monograph on starch has described the action of saliva when digested with starch for a day, at a temperature of 40° to 47° C.; he says that the residue is a skeleton, corresponding in form to the original grain but somewhat smaller, light, and very mobile in water. He concludes that its interstitial spaces must have been previously filled with granulose.

This experiment, which has been repeated by one of us (F.), does not in our opinion warrant all the inferences that Nägeli has drawn from it: it is true that many separate parts of the grain are dissolved by the saliva, while others have disappeared down to a mere film, and others again have been attacked in a very irregular manner. But we cannot agree with the statement that anything comparable to a skeleton of the grain has been left. After longer action at a higher temperature, which however must not exceed 65° C., a more copious dissolution of the starch, either by saliva or by bile, takes place; but in no case is it complete.

Chemistry of Starch—Its composition answers to the formula (C₆H₁₀O₅)₂+3 OH₂, or when dried at 100° C., C₆H₁₀O₅. Musculus however showed, in 1861, that by the action of dilute acids or of Diastase, starch is resolved into Dextrin, C₁₂H₂₀O₁₀, and Dextrose, C₆H₁₂O₆, with which decomposition, the formula, C₁₈H₃₀O₁₅, would be more in accord. Sachsse (1877) on the other hand advocates the formula C₃₀H₆₂O₃₁ + 12 OH₂.

Cold water is not without action on starch; if the latter be continuously triturated with it, the filtrate, in which no particles can be detected by the microscope, will assume a blue colour on addition of iodine, without the formation of a precipitate. The proportion of starch thus brought into solution is infinitely small, and always at the expense of the integrity of the grains. It is even probable that the solution in this case is due to the minute amount of heat, which must of necessity be developed by the trituration.

Certain reagents capable of attacking starch act upon it in very different ways. The action in the cold of concentrated aqueous solutions of easily soluble neutral salts or of chloral hydrate is remarkable. Potassium bromide or iodide, or calcium chloride for instance, cause the grains to swell, and render them soluble in cold water. At a certain degree of dilution a perfectly clear liquid is formed, which at first contains neither dextrin nor sugar; it is coloured blue, but is not precipitated by iodine water; and starch can be thrown down from it by alcohol. This precipitate, though entirely devoid of the structural peculiarity of starch, still exhibits some of the leading properties of that substance; it is coloured in the same manner by iodine, does not dissolve even when fresh in ammoniacal cupric oxide, and after drying is insoluble in water, whether cold or boiling. The progress of the solvent is most easily traced when calcium chloride is used, as this salt acts more slowly than the others we have mentioned. It leaves scarcely any perceptible residue. This fact in our opinion militates against the notion that starch is composed of a peculiar amylaceous substance, deposited within a skeleton of cellulose.

The remarkable action of iodine upon starch was discovered in 1814 by Colin and Gaultier de Claubry. It is extremely different in degree, according to the peculiar kind of starch, the proportion of iodine, and the nature of the substance the grains are impregnated with, before or after their treatment with iodine. The action is even entirely arrested (no blue colour being produced) by the presence in certain proportion of quinine, tannin, Aqua Picis, and of other bodies.

The combination of iodine with starch does not take place in equivalent proportions, and is moreover easily overcome by heat. The iodine combined with starch amounts at the utmost to 7·5 per cent. The compound is most readily formed in the presence of water, and then produces a deep indigo-blue. Almost all other substances capable of penetrating starch grains, weaken the colour of the iodine compound to violet, reddish yellow, yellow, or greenish blue. These different shades, the production of which has been described by Nägeli with great diffuseness, are merely the colours which belong to iodine itself in the solid, liquid, or gaseous form. They must be referred to the fact that the particles of iodine diffuse themselves in a peculiar but hitherto unexplained manner within the grain or in the swollen and dissolved starch.

Commerce of Arrowroot—The chief kinds of arrowroot found in commerce are known as Bermuda, St. Vincent, and Natal; but that of Jamaica and other West India Islands, of Brazil, Sierra Leone, and the East Indies, are quoted in price-currents, at least occasionally. Of these the Bermuda enjoys the highest reputation and commands by far the highest price; but its good quality is shared by the arrowroot of other localities, from which, when equally pure, it can in nowise be distinguished. Greenish, however, points out that in Natal arrowroot the layers (or laminæ) are more obvious than in other varieties, although it appears that the former is also produced by Maranta.

The importations of arrowroot into the United Kingdom during the year 1870 amounted to 21,770 cwt., value £33,063. Of this quantity the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies furnished nearly 17,000 cwt., and the colony of Natal about 3000 cwt. The exports from St. Vincent in 1874 were 2,608,100 lb, those of the Bermudas in 1876 only 45,520 lb. The shipments from the colony of Natal during the years 1866 to 1876 varied from 1,076 cwt. in 1873 to 4,305 cwt. in 1867.

Uses—Arrowroot boiled with water or milk is a much-valued food in the sick-room. It is also an agreeable article of diet in the form of pudding or blancmange.

Adulteration—Other starches than that of Maranta are occasionally sold under the name of Arrowroot. Their recognition is only possible by the aid of the microscope.

Substitutes for Arrowroot.

Potato Starch—This substance, known in trade as Farina or Potato Flour, is made from the tubers of the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) by a process analogous to that followed in the preparation of arrowroot. It has the following characters:—examined under the microscope, the granules are seen to be chiefly of two sorts, the first small and spherical, the second of much larger size, often 100 mkm. in length, having an irregularly circular, oval or egg-shaped outline, finely marked with concentric rings round a minute inconspicuous hilum. When heated in water, the grains swell considerably even at 60° C. Hydrochloric acid, sp. gr. 1·06, dissolves them at 40° quickly and almost completely, the granules being no longer deposited, as in the case of arrowroot similarly treated. The mixture of arrowroot and hydrochloric acid is inodorous, but that of potato starch has a peculiar though not powerful odour.

Canna Starch, Tous-les-Mois, Toulema, Tolomane—A species of Canna is cultivated in the West India Islands, especially St. Kitts, for the sake of a peculiar starch which, since about the year 1836, has been extracted from its rhizomes by a process similar to that adopted in making arrowroot. The specific name of the plant is still undetermined; it is said to agree with Canna edulis Ker (C. indica Ruiz et Pavon).

The starch, which bears the same name as the plant, is a dull white powder, having a peculiar satiny or lustrous aspect, by reason of the extraordinary magnitude of the starch granules of which it is composed. These granules examined under the microscope are seen to be flattened and of irregular form, as circular, oval, oblong, or oval-truncate. The centre of the numerous concentric rings with which each granule is marked, is usually at one end rather than in the centre of a granule. The hilum is inconspicuous. The granules though far larger than those of the potato, are of the same density as the smaller forms of that starch, and, like them, float perfectly on chloroform. When heated, they begin to burst at 72° C. Dilute hydrochloric acid acts upon them as it does on arrowroot.

Canna starch boiled with 20 times its weight of water affords a jelly less clear and more tenacious than that of arrowroot, yet applicable to exactly the same purposes. The starch is but little known and not much esteemed in Europe; it was exported in 1876 from St. Kitts to the amount of 51,873 lb, besides 5,300 lb arrowroot starch.

Curcuma Starch, Tikor—The pendulous, colourless tubers of some species of Curcuma, but especially of C. angustifolia Roxb. and C. leucorrhiza Roxb., have long been utilized in Southern India for the preparation of a sort of arrowroot, known by the Hindustani name of Tikor, or Tikhur, and sometimes called by Europeans East Indian Arrowroot. The granules of this substance much resemble those of Maranta, but they are neither spherical nor egg-shaped. On the contrary, they are rather to be described as flat discs, 5 to 7 mkm. thick, of elliptic or ovoid outline, sometimes truncate; many attain a length of 60 to 70 mkm. They are always beautifully stratified both on the face and on the edge. The hilum is generally situated at the narrower end. We have observed that when heated in water, the tumefaction of the grains commences at 72° C.

Curcuma starch, which in its general properties agrees with common arrowroot, is rather extensively manufactured in Travancore, Cochin and Canara on the south-western coast of India, but in a very rude manner. Drury states that it is a favourite article of diet among the natives, and that it is exported from Travancore and Madras; we can add that it is not known as a special kind in the English market, and that the article we have seen offered in the London drug sales as East Indian Arrowroot was the starch of Maranta.

Zingiberaceæ.

Rhizoma Zingiberis.

Radix Zingiberis; Ginger; F. Gingembre; G. Ingwer.

Botanical Origin—Zingiber officinale Roscoe (Amomum Zingiber L.), a reed-like plant, with annual leafy stems, 3 to 4 feet high, and flowers in cone-shaped spikes borne on other stems thrown up from the rhizome. It is a native of Asia, in the warmer countries of which it is universally cultivated, but not known in a wild state. It has been introduced into most tropical countries, and is now found in the West Indies, South America, Tropical Western Africa, and Queensland in Australia.

History—Ginger is known in India under the old name of Sringavera, derived possibly from the Greek Ζιγγίβερι. As a spice it was used among the Greeks and Romans, who appear to have received it by way of the Red Sea, inasmuch as they considered it to be a production of Southern Arabia.

In the list of imports from the Red Sea into Alexandria, which in the second century of our era were there liable to the Roman fiscal duty (vectigal), Zingiber occurs among other Indian spices. During the middle ages it is frequently mentioned in similar lists, and evidently constituted an important item in the commercial relations between Europe and the East. Ginger thus appears in the tariff of duties levied at Acre in Palestine about a.d. 1173; in that of Barcelona in 1221; Marseilles in 1228; and Paris in 1296. The Tarif des Péages, or customs tariff, of the Counts of Provence in the middle of the 13th century, provides for the levying of duty at the towns of Aix, Digne, Valensole, Tarascon, Avignon, Orgon, Arles, &c., on various commodities imported from the East. These included spices, as pepper, ginger, cloves, zedoary, galangal, cubebs, saffron, canella, cumin, anise; dye-stuffs, such as lac, indigo, Brazil wood, and especially alum from Castilia and Volcano; and groceries, as racalicia (liquorice), sugar and dates.

In England ginger must have been tolerably well known even prior to the Norman Conquest, for it is frequently named in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books of the 11th century, as well as in the Welsh “Physicians of Myddvai” (see Appendix). During the 13th and 14th centuries it was, next to pepper, the commonest of spices, costing on an average nearly 1s. 7d. per lb., or about the price of a sheep.

The merchants of Italy, about the middle of the 14th century, knew three kinds of ginger, called respectively Belledi, Colombino, and Micchino. These terms may be explained thus:—Belledi or Baladi is an Arabic word, which, as applied to ginger, would signify country or wild, i.e. common ginger. Colombino refers to Columbum, Kolam or Quilon, a port in Travancore frequently mentioned in the middle ages. Ginger termed Micchino denotes that the spice had been brought from or by way of Mecca.

Ginger preserved in syrup, and sometimes called Green Ginger, was also imported during the middle ages, and regarded as a delicacy of the choicest kind.

The plant affording ginger must have been known to Marco Polo (circa 1280-90), who speaks of observing it both in China and India. John of Montecorvino, who visited India about 1292 (see p. 521), describes ginger as a plant like a flag, the root of which can be dug up and transported. Nicolo Conti also gave some description of the plant and of the collection of the root, as witnessed by him in India.

The Venetians received ginger by way of Egypt; yet some of the superior kinds were conveyed from India overland by the Black Sea, as stated by Marino Sanudo about 1306.

Ginger was introduced into America by Francisco de Mendoça, who took it from the East Indies to New Spain. It was shipped for commercial purposes from the Island of St. Domingo as early at least as 1585; and from Barbados in 1654. According to Renny, 22,053 cwt. were exported from the West Indies to Spain in 1547.

Description—Ginger is known in two forms, namely the rhizome dried with its epidermis, in which case it is called coated; or deprived of epidermis, and then termed scraped or uncoated. The pieces, which are called by the spice-dealers races or hands, rarely exceed 4 inches in length, and have a somewhat palmate form, being made up of a series of short, laterally compressed, lobe-like shoots or knobs, the summit of each of which is marked by a depression indicating the former attachment of the leafy stem.

To produce the uncoated ginger, which is that preferred for medicinal use, the fresh rhizome is scraped, washed, and then dried in the sun.

Thus prepared, it has a pale buff hue, and a striated, somewhat fibrous surface. It breaks easily, exhibiting a short and farinaceous fracture with numerous bristle-like fibres. When cut with a knife the younger or terminal portion of the rhizome appears pale yellow, soft and amylaceous, while the older part is flinty, hard and resinous.

Coated ginger, or that which has been dried without the removal of the epidermis, is covered with a wrinkled, striated brown integument, which imparts to it a somewhat coarse and crude appearance, which is usually remarkably less developed on the flat parts of the rhizome. Internally, it is usually of a less bright and delicate hue than ginger from which the cortical part has been removed. Much of it indeed is dark, horny and resinous.

Ginger has an agreeable aromatic odour with a strong pungent taste.

Varieties—Those at present found in the London market are distinguished as Jamaica, Cochin, Bengal, and African. The first three are scraped gingers; the last named is a coated ginger, that is to say, it still retains its epidermis. Jamaica Ginger is the sort most esteemed; and next to it the Cochin. But of each kind there are several qualities, presenting considerable variation inter se.

Scraped or decorticated ginger is often bleached, either by being subjected to the fumes of burning sulphur, or by immersion for a short time in solution of chlorinated lime. Much of that seen in the grocers’ shops looks as if it had been whitewashed, and in fact is slightly coated with calcareous matter,—either sulphate or carbonate of calcium.

Microscopic Structure—A transverse section of coated ginger exhibits a brown, horny external layer, about one millimètre broad, separated by a fine line from the whitish mealy interior portion, through the tissue of which numerous vascular bundles and resin-cells are irregularly scattered. The external tissue consists of a loose outer layer, and an inner composed of tabular cells: these are followed by peculiar short prosenchymatous cells, the walls of which are sinuous on transverse section and partially thickened, imparting a horny appearance. This delicate felted tissue forms the striated surface of scraped ginger, and is the principal seat of the resin and volatile oil, which here fill large spaces. The large-celled parenchyme which succeeds is loaded with starch, and likewise contains numerous masses of resin and drops of oil. The starch granules are irregularly spherical, attaining at the utmost 40 mkm. Certain varieties of ginger, owing to the starch having been rendered gelatinous by scalding, are throughout horny and translucent. The circle of vascular bundles which separates the outer layers and the central portion is narrow, and has the structure of the corresponding circle or nucleus-sheath in turmeric.

Chemical Composition—Ginger contains a volatile oil which is the only constituent of the drug that has hitherto been investigated. By distilling 112 lb. of Jamaica ginger with water in the usual way, we obtained 4½ ounces of this oil, or about ¼ per cent. It is a pale yellow liquid of sp. gr. 0·878, having the peculiar odour of ginger, but not its pungent taste. It dissolves but sparingly in alcohol (0·83); and deviates the ray of polarized light 21°.6 to the left, when examined in a column 50 mm. long. We learn from kind information given us (1878) by Messrs. Schimmel & Co. at Leipzig, that they obtain as much as 2·2 per cent. of oil from good ginger.

The burning taste of ginger is due to a resin which we have not examined, but which well deserves careful analysis. Protocatechuic acid, which is so commonly afforded by resins (see page 243), is also produced by melting the resin of ginger with caustic potash, as shown in 1877 by Stenhouse and Groves.

Commerce—Great Britain imported of ginger as follows:—

1868 1869 1870 1871 1872

52,194 cwt. 34,535 cwt. 33,854 cwt. 32,723 cwt. 32,174 cwt.

In 1876 the imports were 62,164 cwt., valued at £169,252.

The drug was received in 1872 thus:—

From Egypt 4,923 cwt.

” Sierra Leone 6,167 ”

” British India 13,310 ”

” British West Indies 7,543 ”

” other countries 231 ”

Total 32,174 ”

The shipments from Jamaica during the years 1866 to 1876 varied from 599,786 lb. in 1872 to 1,728,075 in 1867. In 1876 there were exported 1,603,764 lb., valued at £28,882.

Uses—Ginger is an agreeable aromatic and stomachic, and as such is often a valuable addition to other medicines. It is much more largely employed as a condiment than as a drug.

Rhizoma Curcumæ.

Radix Curcumæ; Turmeric; F. Curcuma; G. Gelbwurzel, Kurkuma.

Botanical Origin—Curcuma longa L.—Turmeric is indigenous to Southern Asia, and is there largely cultivated both on the continent and in the islands.

History—Dioscorides mentions an Indian plant as a kind of Cyperus (Κύπειρος) resembling ginger, but having when chewed a yellow colour and bitter taste: probably turmeric was intended. Garcia de Orta (1563), as well as Fragoso (1572), describe turmeric as Crocus indicus. A list of drugs sold in the city of Frankfort about the year 1450, names Curcuma along with zedoary and ginger.

In its native countries, it has from remote times been highly esteemed both as a condiment and a dye-stuff; in Europe, it has always been less appreciated than the allied spices of the ginger tribe. In an inventory of the effects of a Yorkshire tradesman, dated 20th Sept., 1578, we find enumerated—“x. owncis of turmeracke, x d.”

Description—The base of the scrape thickens in the first year into an ovate rootstock; this afterwards throws out shoots, forming lateral or secondary rhizomes, each emitting roots, which branch into fibres or are sometimes enlarged as colourless spindle-shaped tubers, rich in starch. The lateral rhizomes are doubtless in a condition to develope themselves as independent plants when separated from the parent. The central rhizomes formerly known as Curcuma rotunda, and the elongated lateral ones as Curcuma longa, were regarded by Linnæus as the production of distinct species.

The radical tubers of some species of Curcuma, as C. angustifolia Roxb., are used for making a sort of arrowroot (p. 637). Sometimes they are dried, and constitute the peculiar kind of turmeric which the Chinese call Yuh-kin.

The turmeric of commerce consists of the two sorts of rhizome just mentioned, namely, the central or round and the lateral or long. The former are ovate, pyriform or subspherical, sometimes pointed at the upper end and crowned with the remains of leaves, while the sides are beset with those of roots and marked with concentric ridges. The diameter is very variable, but is seldom less than ¾ of an inch, and is frequently much more. They are often cut and usually scalded in order to destroy their vitality and facilitate drying.

The lateral rhizomes are subcylindrical, attenuated towards either end, generally curved, covered with a rugose skin, and marked more or less plainly with transverse rings. Sometimes one, two or more short knobs or shoots grow out on one side. The rhizomes, whether round or long, are very hard and firm, exhibiting when broken a dull, waxy, resinous surface, of an orange or orange-brown hue, more or less brilliant. They have a peculiar aromatic odour and taste.

Several varieties of turmeric distinguished by the names of the countries or districts in which they are produced, are found in the English market: but although they present differences which are sufficiently appreciable to the eye of the experienced dealer, the characters of each sort are scarcely so marked or so constant as to be recognizable by mere verbal description. The principal sorts now in commerce are known as China, Madras, Bengal, Java, and Cochin. Of these the first-named is the most esteemed, but it is seldom to be met with in the European market.

Madras Turmeric is a fine sort in large, bold pieces. Sometimes packages of it contain exclusively round rhizomes, while others are made up entirely of the long or lateral.

Bengal Turmeric differs from the other varieties chiefly in its deeper tint, and hence is the sort preferred for dyeing purposes.

Java Turmeric presents no very distinctive features; it is dusted with its own powder, and does not show when broken a very brilliant colour. Judging by the low price at which it is quoted it is not in great esteem. It is the produce of Curcuma longa var. β. minor Hassk.

Microscopic Structure—The suberous coat is made up of 8 to 10 rows of tabular cells; the parenchyme of the middle cortical layer of large roundish polyhedral cells. Towards the centre the transverse section exhibits a coherent ring of fibro-vascular bundles representing a kind of medullary sheath. The parenchyme enclosed by this ring is traversed by scattered bundles of vessels, and in most of its cells contains starch in amorphous, angular, or roundish masses, which are so far disorganized that they no longer exhibit the usual appearance in polarized light, but are nevertheless turned blue by iodine. The starch has been reduced to this condition by scalding.

Resin likewise occurs in separate cells, forming dark yellowish-red particles. The entire tissue is penetrated with yellow colouring matter, and shows numerous drops of essential oil, which in the fresh rhizome is no doubt contained in peculiar cells.

Chemical Composition—The drug yielded us (1876) one per cent. of a yellow essential oil, which contains a portion boiling at 250° C., answering to the formula C₁₀H₁₄O; this liquid differs from carvol (p. 306) by being unable to combine with SH₂. The other constituents of curcuma oil boil at temperatures much above 250°; we found the crude oil and its different portions slightly dextrogyrate.

The aqueous extract of the drug tastes bitter, and is precipitated by tannic acid.

The colouring matter, Curcumin, C₁₀H₁₁₀O₃, may be obtained to the amount of ⅓ per cent. by depriving first the drug of fat and essential oil. The powder, after that treatment with bisulphide of carbon, is gradually exhausted, according to Daube (1871), with warm petroleum (boiling point 80°-90° C.). On cooling chiefly the last portions of petroleum deposit the crystalline curcumin. Its alcoholic solution is purified by mixing it cautiously with basic acetate of lead, not allowing the liquid to assume a decidedly acid reaction. The red precipitate thus formed is collected, washed with alcohol, immersed in water, and decomposed with sulphuretted hydrogen. From the dried mixture of sulphide of lead and curcumin the latter is lastly removed by boiling alcohol.

By Ivanow-Gajewsky (1873) the best produce of curcumin is stated to be obtained by washing an ethereal extract of turmeric with weak ammonia, dissolving the residue in boiling concentrated ammonia, and passing into the solution carbonic acid, by which the curcumin is precipitated in flakes.

After due recrystallization from alcohol curcumin forms yellow crystals, having an odour of vanilla, and exhibiting a fine blue in reflected light. They melt at 165° C. Curcumin is scarcely soluble, even in boiling water, but dissolves readily on addition of an alkali either caustic or carbonate. On acidulating these solutions, a yellow powder of curcumin is precipitated. Curcumin is not abundantly dissolved by ether, very sparingly by benzol or bisulphide of carbon. It is not volatile; heated with zinc dust it yields an oil boiling at 290°; fused with caustic potash, curcumin affords protocatechuic acid (page 243).

Paper tinged with an alcoholic solution of curcumin displays on addition of an alkali a brownish-red coloration, becoming violet on drying. Boracic acid produces an orange tint, turning blue by addition of an alkaline solution. This behaviour of (impure) curcumin was pointed out by Vogel as early as 1815, and has since that time been utilized as a chemical test.

Borax added to an alcoholic solution of curcumin gives rise to a crystallizable substance, which Ivanow-Gajewsky (1870) isolated by heating an alcoholic extract of turmeric with boracic and sulphuric acids. It forms a purple crystalline powder with a metallic green lustre, insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol. Its solution is coloured dark blue by an alkali.

According to the same chemist there also exists in curcuma an alkaloid in very small quantity. Kachler (1870) found in the aqueous decoction an abundance of bioxalate of potassium.

Commerce—In the year 1869 there were imported into the United Kingdom 64,280 cwt. of turmeric; in 1870, 44,900 cwt.,—a very large proportion being furnished by Bengal and Pegu. The export from Calcutta in the year 1870-71 was 59,352 cwt.

Bombay exported in the year 1871-72, 29,780 cwt., of which the greater portion was shipped to Sind and the Persian Gulf, and only 910 cwt. to Europe.

Uses—Turmeric is employed as a condiment in the shape of curry powder, and as such is often sold by druggists; but as a medicine it is obsolete. It is largely consumed in dyeing.

Substitute—Cochin Turmeric is the produce of some other species of Curcuma than C. longa. It consists exclusively of a bulb-shaped rhizome of large dimensions, cut transversely or longitudinally into slices or segments. The cortical part is dull brown; the inner substance is horny and of a deep orange-brown, or when in thin shavings of a brilliant yellow. Mr. A. Forbes Sealy of Cochin has been good enough to send us (1873) living rhizomes of this Curcuma, which he states is mostly grown at Alwaye, north-east of Cochin, and is never used in the country as turmeric, though its starchy tubers are employed for making arrowroot. The rhizomes sent are thick, short, conical, and of enormous size, some attaining as much as 2½ inches in diameter. Internally they are of a bright orange-yellow.

The beautiful figures of Roscoe show several species of Curcuma and Zingiber provided with yellow tubers or rhizomes, all probably containing curcumin.

Rhizoma Galangæ.

Radix Galangæ minoris; Galangal; F. Racine de Galanga; G. Galgant.

Botanical Origin—Alpinia officinarum Hance, a flag-like plant, with stems about 4 feet high, clothed with narrow lanceolate leaves, and terminating in short and simple racemes of elegant white flowers, shaded and veined with dull red. It grows cultivated in the island of Hainan in the south of China, and, as is supposed, in some of the southern provinces of the Chinese Empire.

History—The earliest reference to galangal we have met with occurs in the writings of the Arabian geographer Ibn Khurdádbah about a.d. 869-885, who in enumerating the productions of a country called Sila, names galangal together with musk, aloes, camphor, silk, and cassia. Edrisi, three hundred years later, is more explicit, for he mentions it with many other productions of the far East, as brought from India and China to Aden, then a great emporium of the trade of Asia with Egypt and Europe. The physician Alkindi, who lived at Bassora and Bagdad in the second half of the 9th century, and somewhat later Rhazes and Avicenna, notice galangal, the use of which was introduced into Europe through the medical system promulgated by them and other writers of the same school. As to Great Britain, galingal, as it was frequently spelt, also occurs in the Welsh “Meddygon Myddfai” (see Appendix).

Many notices exist showing that galangal was imported with pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmegs, cardamoms and zedoary; and that during the middle ages it was used in common with these substances as a culinary spice, which it is still held to be in certain parts of Europe. The plant affording the drug was unknown until the year 1870, when a description of it was communicated to the Linnean Society of London by Dr. H. F. Hance, from specimens collected by Mr. E. C. Taintor, near Hoihow in the north of Hainan.

Description—The drug consists of a cylindrical rhizome, having a maximum diameter of about ¾ of an inch, but for the most part considerably smaller. This rhizome has been cut while fresh into short pieces, 1½ to 3 inches in length, which are often branched, and are marked transversely at short intervals by narrow raised sinuous rings, indicating the former attachment of leaves or scales. The pieces are hard, tough and shrivelled, externally of a dark reddish-brown, displaying when cut transversely an internal substance of rather paler hue (but never white), with a darker central column. The drug exhales when comminuted an agreeable aroma, and has a strongly pungent, spicy taste.

Microscopic Structure—The central portion of the rhizome is separated from the outer tissue by the nucleus-sheath, which appears as a well-defined darker line. Yet the central tissue does not differ much from that surrounding it, both being composed of uniform parenchyme cells, traversed by scattered vascular bundles. There also occur throughout the whole tissue isolated cells loaded with essential oil or resin. But the larger number of cells abound in large starch granules of an unusual club-shaped form. Some cells contain a brown substance, differing from resin in being insoluble in alcohol. The corky layer is remarkable from its cells having undulated walls.

Chemical Composition—The odour of galangal is due to an essential oil, which the rhizoma yields to the extent of only 0·7 per cent., and which we found to be very slightly deviating the plane of polarization to the left.

Brandes extracted from Galangal, by means of ether, an inodorous, tasteless, crystalline body called Kämpferid, which is worthy of further examination.

The pungent principle of the drug, which is probably analogous to that of ginger, has not been studied.

Commerce—Galangal is shipped from Canton to other ports of China, to India and Europe, but there are no general statistics to give an idea of the total production. From official returns quoted by Hance, the export of the year 1869, which seems to have been exceptionally large, amounted to 370,800 lb. From Kiung-chow, island of Hainan, 2,113 peculs (281,733 lb.) were exported in 1877.

Uses—The drug is an aromatic stimulant of the nature of ginger, now nearly obsolete in British medicine. It is still a popular remedy and spice in Livonia, Esthonia and central Russia, and by the Tartars is taken with tea. It is also in some requisition in Russia among brewers, and the manufacturers of vinegar and cordials, and finally as a cattle medicine.

Substitute—The rhizoma of Alpina Galanga Willd., a plant of Java, constitutes the drug known as Radix Galangæ majoris or Greater Galangal, packages of which occasionally appear in the London drug sales. It may be at once distinguished from the Chinese drug by its much larger size and the pale buff hue of its internal substance, the latter in strong contrast with the orange-brown outer skin.

Fructus Cardamomi.

Semina Cardamomi minoris; Cardamoms, Malabar Cardamoms; F. Cardamomes; G. Cardamomen.

Botanical Origin—Elettaria Cardamomum Maton (Alpinia Cardamomum Roxb.), a flag-like perennial plant, 6 to 12 feet high, with large lanceolate leaves on long sheathing stalks, and flowers in lax flexuose horizontal scapes, 6 to 18 inches in length, which are thrown out to the number of 3 or 4, close to the ground. The fruit is ovoid, three-sided, plump and smooth, with a fleshy green pericarp.

The Cardamom plant grows abundantly, both wild and under cultivation, in the moist shady mountain forests of North Canara, Coorg and Wynaad on the Malabar Coast; at an elevation of 2500 to 5000 feet above the sea. It is truly wild in Canara and in the Anamalai, Cochin and Travancore forests. The cardamom region has a mean temperature of 22° C. (72° F.), and a mean rainfall of 121 inches.

A well-marked variety, differing chiefly in the elongated form and large size of its fruits, is found wild in the forests of the central and southern provinces of Ceylon. It was formerly regarded as a distinct species under the name of Elettaria major, but careful observation of growing specimens has shown that it possesses no characters to warrant it being considered more than a variety of the typical plant, and it is therefore now called E. Cardamomum var. β. It is only known to occur in Ceylon, where the ordinary cardamom of Malabar is not found except as a cultivated plant.

History—Cardamoms, Elā, are mentioned in the writings of Susruta, and hence may have been used in India from a remote period. It is not unlikely that in common with ginger and pepper they reached Europe in classical times, although it is not possible from the descriptions that have come down to determine exactly what was the Καρδάμωμον of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, or the Ἄμωμον of the last named writer. The Amomum, Amomis and Cardamomum of Pliny are also doubtful, the description he gives of the last being unintelligible as applied to anything now known by that name.

In the list of Indian spices liable to duty at Alexandria, circa a.d. 176-180 (see Appendix, A), Amomum as well as Cardamomum is mentioned. St. Jerome names Amomum together with musk, as perfumes in use among the voluptuous ecclesiastics of the 4th century.

Cardamoms are named by Edrisi about a.d. 1154 as a production of Ceylon, and also as an article of trade from China to Aden; and in the same century they are mentioned together with cinnamon and cloves (p. 282) as an import in Palestine by way of Acre, then a trading city of the Levant.

The first writer who definitely and correctly states the country of the cardamom appears to be the Portuguese navigator Barbosa (1514), who frequently names it as a production of the Malabar coast. Garcia de Orta mentions the shipment of the drug to Europe; he also ascertained that the larger sort was produced in Ceylon. The Malabar cardamon plant was figured by Rheede under its indigenous name of Elettari.

The essential oil of cardamoms was distilled before 1544 by Valerius Cordus (see p. 526, note 1).

Cultivation and Production—Although the cardamom plant grows wild in the forests of Southern India, where it is commonly called Ilāchi, its fruits are largely obtained from cultivated plants. The methods of cultivation, which vary in the different districts, may be thus described:—

1. Previous to the commencement of the rains the cultivators ascend the mountain sides, and seek in the shady evergreen forests a spot where some cardamom plants are growing. Here they make small clearings, in which the admission of light occasions the plant to develope in abundance. The cardamom plants attain 2 to 3 feet in height during the following monsoon, after which the ground is again cleared of weeds, protected with a fence, and left to itself for a year. About two years after the first clearing the plants begin to flower, and five months later ripen some fruits, but a full crop is not got till at least a year after. The plants continue productive six or seven years. A garden, 484 square yards in area, four of which may be made in an acre of forest, will give on an average an annual crop of 12½ lbs. of garbled cardamoms. Ludlow, an Assistant Conservator of Forests, reckons that not more than 28 lbs. can be got from an acre of forest. From what he says, it further appears that the plants which come up on clearings of the Coorg forests are mainly seedlings, which make their appearance in the same quasi-spontaneous manner as certain plants in the clearings of a wood in Europe. He says they commence to bear in about 3½ years after their first appearance. The plan of cultivation above described is that pursued in the forests of Travancore, Coorg and Wynaad.

2. On the lower range of the Pulney Hills, near Dindigul, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet above the sea, the cardamom plant is cultivated in the shade. The natives burn down the underwood, and clear away the small trees of the dense moist forests called sholas, which are damp all the year round. The cardamoms are then sown, and when a few inches high are planted out, either singly or in twos, under the shade of the large trees. They take five years before they bear fruit: “in October,” remarks our informant, “I saw the plants in full flower and also in fruit,—the latter not however ripe.”

3. In North Canara and Western Mysore the cardamom is cultivated in the betel-nut plantations. The plants, which are raised from seed, are planted between the palms, from which and from plantains they derive a certain amount of shade. They are said to produce fruit in their third year.

Cardamoms begin to ripen in October, and the gathering continues during dry weather for two or three months. All the fruits on a scape do not become ripe at the same time, yet too generally the whole scape is gathered at once and dried,—to the manifest detriment of the drug. This is done partly to save the fruit from being eaten by snakes, frogs and squirrels, and partly to avoid the capsules splitting, which they do when quite mature. In some plantations however the cardamoms are gathered in a more reasonable fashion. As they are collected the fruits are carried to the houses, laid out for a few days on mats, then stripped from their scapes, and the drying completed by a gentle fire-heat. In Coorg the fruit is stripped from the scape before drying, and the drying is sometimes effected wholly by sun-heat.

In the native states of Cochin and Travancore cardamoms are a monopoly of the respective governments. The rajah of the latter state requires that all the produce shall be sold to his officials, who forward it to the main depôt at Alapalli or Aleppi, a port in Travancore, where his commercial agent resides. The rajah is tenacious of his rights, and inserts a clause in the leases he grants to European coffee-planters, of whom a great many have settled in his territory, requiring that cardamoms shall not be grown.

The cardamoms at Aleppi are sold by auction, and bought chiefly by Moplah merchants for transport to different parts of India, and also, through third parties, to England. All the lower qualities are consumed in India, and the finer alone shipped to Europe.

In the forests belonging to the British Government cardamoms are mostly reckoned among the miscellaneous items of produce; but in Coorg, the cardamom forests are now let at a rental of £3,000 per annum under a lease which will expire in 1878.

Dr. Cleghorn, late Conservator of Forests in the Madras Presidency, observes in a letter to one of us, that the rapid extension of coffee culture along the slopes of the Malabar mountains has tended to lessen the production of cardamoms, and has encroached considerably upon the area of their indigenous growth. A recent writer has shown from his own experience that the cultivation of the cardamom is a branch of industry worth the attention of Europeans, and has given many valuable details for insuring successful results.

Description—The fruit of the Malabar cardamom as found in commerce is an ovoid or oblong, three-sided, three-valved capsule, containing numerous seeds arranged in three cells. It is rounded at the base, and often retains a small stalk; towards the apex it is more or less contracted, and terminates in a short beak. The longitudinally-striated, inodorous, tasteless pericarp is of a pale greyish-yellow, or buff, or brown when fully ripe, of a thin papery consistence, splitting lengthwise into three valves. From the middle of the inner side of each valve a thin partition projects towards the axis, thereby producing three cells, each of which encloses 5 to 7 dark brown, aromatic seeds, arranged in two rows and attached in the central angle.

The seeds, which are about two lines long, are irregularly angular, transversely rugose, and have a depressed hilum and a deeply channelled raphe. Each seed is enclosed in a thin colourless aril.

Cardamoms vary in size, shape, colour and flavour: those which are shortly ovoid or nearly globular, and ⁴/₁₀ to ⁶/₁₀ of an inch in length, are termed in trade language shorts; while those of a more elongated form, pointed at each end, and ⁷/₁₀ to ⁹/₁₀ of an inch long, are called short-longs. They are further distinguished by the names of localities, as Malabar (or Mangalore), Aleppi, and Madras. The Malabar Cardamoms, which are the most esteemed, are of full colour, and occur of both forms, namely shorts and short-longs; they are brought to Europe viâ Bombay. Those terms Aleppi are generally shorts, plump, beaked and of a peculiar greenish tint; they are imported from Calicut, and sometimes from Aleppi. The Madras are chiefly of elongated form (short-longs) and of a more pallid hue; they are shipped at Madras and Pondicherry.

Cardamoms are esteemed in proportion to their plumpness and heaviness, and the sound and mature condition of the seeds they contain. Good samples afford about three-fourths of their weight of seeds.

The fruits of the second form (var. β) of Elettaria Cardamomum, known in trade as Ceylon Cardamoms, are from 1 to 2 inches in length, and ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch in breadth, distinctly three-sided, often arched, and always of a dark greyish-brown. The seeds are larger and more numerous than those of the Malabar plant, and somewhat different in odour and taste.

Microscopic Structure—The testa of the seed consists of three distinct layers, namely an exterior of thick-walled, spirally-striated cells, somewhat longitudinally extended, and exhibiting on transverse section, square, not very large, cavities; then a row of large cells with thin transverse walls; and finally, an internal layer of deep brown, radially-arranged cells, the walls of which have so thick a deposit that at the most only small cavities remain.

The granular, colourless, sac-shaped albumen encloses a horny endosperm, in which the embryo is inserted the projecting radicle being directed towards the hilum. The cells of the albumen have the form of elongated polyhedra, almost entirely filled with very small starch granules. Besides them, there occur in most of the cells, somewhat larger masses of albuminoid matter having a rhombohedric form, distinctly observable when thin slices of the seed are examined under almond oil in polarized light. These remarkable crystalloid bodies resemble those occurring in the seeds of cumin (p. 332).

Chemical Composition—The parenchyme of the albumen and embryo is loaded with fatty oil and essential oil, the former existing in the seed to the extent of about 10 per cent.

The percentage of essential oil is stated by Messrs. Schimmel & Co., Leipzig, to be equal to 5 in the Madras Cardamoms, and to 3·5 in the Ceylon. We found the latter to be dextrogyrate; the same gentlemen presented us (1876) with a crystallized deposit from the latter oil, which appears to be identical with common camphor. Its alcoholic solution deviates the plane of polarization to the right, apparently to the same amount as that of common camphor (see also oil of spike, p. 479).

Dumas and Péligot (1834) state to have obtained from the essential oil of cardamoms (inodorous?) crystals of terpin, C₁₀H₁₆ + 3 OH₂. The ash of cardamoms, in common with that of several other plants of the same order, is remarkably rich in manganese.

Commerce—There are no statistics to show the production of cardamoms in the south of India or even the quantity exported. The shipments in the year 1872-73 from Bombay, to which port the drug is largely sent from the Madras Presidency, amounted to 1,650 cwt., of which 1,055 cwt. were exported to the United Kingdom.

Cardamoms, the produce of Ceylon and therefore of the large variety, were exported from that island in 1872 to the extent of 9,273 lb.—the whole quantity being shipped to the United Kingdom.

Uses—Cardamoms are an agreeable aromatic, often administered in conjunction with other medicines. As an ingredient in curry powder, they have also some use as a condiment. But the consumption in England is small in comparison with what it is in Russia, Sweden, Norway and parts of Germany, where they are constantly employed as a spice for the flavouring of cakes. In these countries Ceylon cardamoms are also used, but exclusively for the manufacture of liqueurs. In India, cardamoms, besides being used in medicine, are employed as a condiment and for chewing with betel.

Other sorts of Cardamom.

The fruits of several other plants of the order Zingiberaceæ have at various times been employed in pharmacy under the common name of Cardamom. We shall here notice only those which have some importance in European or Indian commerce.

Round or Cluster Cardamom—Amomum Cardamomum L., the mother plant of this drug, is a native of Cambodia, Siam, Sumatra and Java.

During the intercourse with Siam, which was frequent in the early part of the 17th century, this drug, which is there in common use, occasionally found its way into Europe. Clusius received a specimen of it in 1605 as the true Amomum of the ancients, and figured it as a great rarity. As Amomum verum it had a place in the pharmacopœias of this period. Parkinson (1640), who figures it as Amomum genuinum, says that “of late days it hath been sent to Venice from the East Indies.” Dale (1693) and Pomet (1694) both regarded it as a rare drug; the latter says it is brought from Holland, and that it is the only thing that ought to be used when Amomum is ordered. In 1751 it was so scarce that in making the Theriaca Andromachi some other drug had always to be substituted for it.

Thus it had completely disappeared, when about the year 1853 commercial relations were re-opened with Siam; and among the commodities poured into the market were Round Cardamoms. They were not appreciated, and the importations becoming unprofitable, soon ceased. They are nevertheless an article of considerable traffic in Eastern Asia.

Round Cardamoms are produced in small compact bunches. Each fruit is globular, ⁵/₁₀ to ⁷/₁₀ of an inch in diameter, marked with longitudinal furrows, and sometimes distinctly three-lobed. The pericarp is thin, fragile, somewhat hairy, of a buff colour, enclosing a three-lobed mass of seeds, which are mostly shrivelled as if the fruit had been gathered unripe. The seeds, which have a general resemblance to those of the Malabar cardamom, have a strong camphoraceous, aromatic taste.

There is a large export from Siam of cardamoms of this and the following sort. The shipments from Bangkok in 1871 amounted to 4,678 peculs (623,733 lbs.), and were all to Singapore and China. In 1875 we noticed the export from Bangkok of 267 peculs of “true” cardamoms, valued at 45,140 dollars, and 3,267 peculs of “bastard” cardamoms, value 92,865 dollars; the latter no doubt refer to the following kind:—

Xanthioid Cardamom; Wild or Bastard Cardamom of Siam—This is afforded by Amomum xanthioides Wallich, a native of Tenasserim and Siam. During the past thirty years the seeds of this plant, deprived of their capsules, have often been imported into the London market, and they are now also common in the bazaars of India. They closely resemble the seeds of the Malabar cardamom, differing chiefly in flavour and in being rather more finely rugose. Occasionally they are imported still cohering in ovoid, three-lobed masses, as packed in the pericarp. Sometimes they are distinguished as Bastard or Wild, but are more generally termed simply Cardamom Seeds. They are a considerable article of trade in Siam.

The fruits of this species grow in round clusters and are remarkable for having the pericarp thickly beset with weak fleshy spines, which gives them some resemblance to the fruits of a Xanthium, and has suggested the specific name.

Bengal Cardamom—This drug, which with the next two has been hitherto confounded under one name, is afforded by Amomum subulatum Roxb., a native of the Morung mountains, to the S.S.W. of Darjiling, in about 26°·30′ N. lat. The fruit is known by the name of Winged Bengal Cardamom, Morung Elachi or Buro Elachi. They average about an inch in length, and are of ovoid or slightly obconic form, and obscurely 3-sided; the lower end is rounded and usually devoid of stalk. The upper part of the fruit is provided with 9 narrow jagged wings or ridges, which become apparent after maceration; and the summit terminates in a truncate bristly nipple,—never protracted into a long tube. The pericarp is coarsely striated, and of a deep brown. It easily splits into 3 valves, inclosing a 3-lobed mass of seeds, 60 to 80 in number, agglutinated by a viscid saccharine pulp, due to the aril with which each seed is surrounded. The seeds are of roundish form, rendered angular by mutual pressure, and about ⅛ of an inch long; they have a highly aromatic, camphoraceous taste.

Nepal Cardamom—The description of the Bengal cardamom applies in many points to this drug, to which it has a singularly close resemblance. The fruit is of the same size and form, and is also crowned in its upper part with thin jagged ridges, and marked in a similar manner with longitudinal striæ; and lastly, the seeds have the same shape and flavour. But it differs, firstly, in bearing on its summit a tubular calyx, which is as long or longer than the fruit itself; and, secondly, in the fruit being often attached to a short stalk. The fruits are borne on an ovoid scape, 3 to 4 inches long, densely crowded with overlapping bracts, which are remarkably broad and truncate with a sharp central claw,—very distinct from the much narrower ovate bracts of A. aromaticum, as shown in Roxburgh’s unpublished drawing of that plant.

The plant, which is unquestionably a species of Amomum, has not yet been identified with any published description. We have to thank Colonel Richard C. Lawrence, British Resident at Katmandu, for sending us a fruit-scape in alcohol, some dried leaves, and also the drug itself,—the last agreeing perfectly with specimens obtained through other channels.

The Nepal cardamom, the first account of which is due to Hamilton, is cultivated on the frontiers of Nepal, near Darjiling. The plant is stated by Col. Lawrence to attain 3 to 6 feet in height, and to be grown on well-watered slopes of the hills, under the shelter of trees. The fruit is exported to other parts of India.

Java Cardamom—A well-marked fruit, produced by Amomum maximum Roxb., a plant of Java. The fruits are arranged to the number of 30 to 40 on a short thick scape, and form a globose group, 4 inches in diameter. They are stalked, and of a conical or ovoid form, in the fresh state as much as 1½ inches long by 1 inch broad. Each fruit is provided with 9 to 10 prominent wings, ⅛ of an inch high, running from base to apex, and coarsely toothed except in their lowest part. The summit is crowned by a short, withered, calycinal tube.

Mr. Binnendyk, of the Botanical garden of Buitenzorg, in Java, who has kindly supplied us with fine specimens of A. maximum, as well as with an admirable coloured drawing, states that the plant is cultivated, and that its fruits are sold for the sake of their agreeable edible pulp. We do not know whether the dried fruits or the seeds are ever exported. Pereira confounded them with Bengal and Nepal cardamoms.

Korarima Cardamom—The Arab Physicians were acquainted with a sort of cardamom called Heil, which was later known in Europe, and is mentioned in the most ancient printed pharmacopœias as Cardamomum majus, a name occurring also in Valerius Cordus and Mattiolus. Like some other Eastern drugs, it gradually disappeared from European commerce, and its name came to be transferred to Grains of Paradise, which to the present day are known in the shops as Semina Cardamomi majoris.

The true Cardamomum majus is a conical fruit, in size and shape not unlike a small fig reversed, containing roundish angular seeds, of an agreeable aromatic flavour, much resembling that of the Malabar cardamom, and quite devoid of the burning taste of grains of paradise. Each fruit is perforated, having been strung on a cord to dry; such strings of cardamoms are sometimes used by the Arabs as rosaries. The fruit in question is called in the Galla language Korarima, but it is also known as Gurági spice, and by its Arabic names of Heil and Habhal-habashi. According to Beke, it is conveyed to the market of Báso (10° N. lat.), in Southern Abyssinia, from Tumhé, a region lying in about 9° N. lat. and 35° E. long.; thence it is carried to Massowah, on the Red Sea, and shipped for India and Arabia. Von Heuglin speaks of it as brought from the Galla country. It is not improbable that it is the same fruit which Speke saw growing in 1862 at Uganda, in lat 0°, and which he says is strung like a necklace by the Wagonda people. Under the name of Heel Habashee, Korarima cardamoms were contributed in 1873 from Shoa to the Vienna exhibition; we have also been presented, in 1877, with an excellent specimen of them, recently imported, by Messrs. Schimmel & Co., Leipzig.

Pereira proposed for the plant the name of Amomum Korarima, but it has never been botanically described. It would appear from the above statements that it must be indigenous to the whole mountainous region of Eastern Africa, from the Victoria Nyanza lake (Uganda) to the countries of Tumhé, Gurague, and Shoa, south and south-eastward of Abyssinia.

Grana Paradisi.

Semina Cardamomi majoris, Piper Melegueta; Grains of Paradise, Guinea Grains, Melegueta Pepper; F. Grains de Paradis, Maniguette; G. Paradieskörner.

Botanical Origin—Amomum Melegueta Roscoe—an herbaceous, reed-like plant, 3 to 5 feet high, producing on a scape rising scarcely an inch above the ground, a delicate, wax-like, pale purple flower, which is succeeded by a smooth, scarlet, ovoid fruit, 3 to 4 inches in length, rising out of sheathing bracts.

It varies considerably in the dimensions of all its parts, according to more or less favourable circumstances of soil and climate. In Demerara, where the plant grows luxuriously in cultivation, the fruit is as large as a fine pear, measuring with its tubular part as much as 5 inches in length by 2 inches in diameter; on the other hand, in some parts of West Africa it scarcely exceeds in size a large filbert. It has a thick fleshy pericarp, enclosing a colourless acid pulp of pleasant taste, in which are imbedded the numerous seeds.

A. Melegueta is widely distributed in tropical West Africa, occurring along the coast region from Sierra Leone to Congo. The littoral region, termed, in allusion to its producing grains of paradise, the Grain Coast, Pepper Coast, or Melegueta Coast, lies between Liberia and Cape Palmas; or, more exactly, between Capes Mesurado (Montserrado) and St. Andrews. The Gold Coast, whence the seeds are now principally exported, is in the Gulf of Guinea, further eastward.

Of the distribution of the plant in the interior we have no exact information. Yet the name Melegueta refers to the ancient empire of Melle (Meli or Melly), formerly extending over the upper Niger region, about in 4° E. long., and then inhabited by the Mandingos, now by the Fulbe or Fullãn. Messena is their most considerable place. In that region Amomum Melegueta may be indigenous, or the spice, being formerly exported from the coast by way of Melle, took its commercial name in allusion to the latter.

History—There is no evidence that the ancients were acquainted with the seeds called Grains of Paradise; nor can we find any reference to them earlier than an incidental mention under their African name, in the account of a curious festival held at Treviso in a.d. 1214: it was a sort of tournament, during which a sham fortress, held by twelve noble ladies and their attendants, was besieged and stormed by assailants armed with flowers, fruits, sweetmeats, perfumes, and spices, amongst which last figure—Melegetæ!

After this period there are many notices, showing the seeds to have been in general use. Nicolas Myrepsus, physician at the court of the Emperor John III. at Nicœa, in the 13th century, prescribed Μνεγέται; and his contemporary, Simon of Genoa, at Rome, names the same drug as Melegete or Melegette. Grana Paradisi are enumerated among spices sold at Lyons in 1245, and were used about the same time by the Welsh Physicians of Myddvai under the name Grawn Paris. They also occur as Greyn Paradijs in a tariff of duties levied at Dordrecht in Holland in 1358. And again among the spices used by John, king of France, when in England, a.d. 1359-60, Grainne de Paradis is repeatedly mentioned.

In the earliest times the drug was conveyed by the long land journey from the Mandingo country through the desert to the Mediterranean port, Monte di Barca (Mundibarca), on the coast of Tripoli. There the spice was shipped by the Italians, and being the produce of an unknown region and held in great esteem, it acquired the name of Grains of Paradise, or also, as already stated at page 650, that of Semina Cardamomi Majoris. That they came from Melli is expressly stated also by Leonhard Fuchs. Small quantities of the drug still reach Tripoli in the same way.

Towards the middle of the 14th century, there began to be direct commercial intercourse with tropical Western Africa. Margry relates that ships were sent thither from Dieppe in 1364, and took cargoes of ivory and malaguette from near the mouth of the river Cestos, now Sestros. A century later the coast was visited by the Portuguese, who termed it Terra de malaguet. The celebrated Columbus also, who traded to the coast of Guinea, called it Costa di Maniguetta. Soon after this period the spice became a monopoly of the kings of Portugal.

English voyagers visited the Gold Coast in the 16th century, bringing thence in exchanging for European goods, gold, ivory, pepper, and Grains of Paradise. The pepper was doubtless that of Piper Clusii (p. 589).

Grains of paradise, often called simply grains, were anciently used as a condiment like pepper. They were also employed with cinnamon and ginger in making the spiced wine called hippocras, in vogue during the 14th and 15th centuries.

In the Portuguese and Spanish idioms, the name Melegueta, spelt in various ways, as Melegette, Melligetta, Mallaguetta, Manigete, Maniguette, was subsequently also applied to other substitutes of pepper, and even to that spice itself.

In the hands of modern botanists, the plant affording grains of paradise has been the subject of a complication of errors which it is needless to discuss. Suffice it to say, that Amomum Granum Paradisi as described by Linnæus cannot be identified;—that in 1817, Afzelius, a Swedish botanist, who resided some years at Sierra Leone, published a description of “Amomum Granum Paradisi? Linn.,” but that the specimen of it alleged to have been received from him, and now preserved in the herbarium of Sir J. E. Smith, belongs to another species. Under these circumstances, the name given to the grains of paradise plant by Roscoe, A. Melegueta, has been accepted as quite free from doubt.

Description—The seeds are about ⅒ of an inch in diameter, rather variable in form, being roundish, bluntly angular or somewhat pyramidal. They are hard, with a shining, reddish-brown, shagreen-like surface. The hilum is beak-shaped and of paler colour. The seeds when crushed are feebly aromatic, but have a most pungent and burning taste.

Microscopic Structure—In structure, grains of paradise agree in most respects with cardamom seeds. Yet in the former, the cells of the albumen have very thin, delicate walls which are much more elongated. Of the testa, only the innermost layer agrees with the corresponding part of cardamom; whilst the middle layer has the cell-walls so much thickened that only a few cavities, widely distant from one another, remain open. The outer layer of the testa consists of thick-walled cells, the cavities of which appear, on transverse section, radially extended. The albumen is loaded with starch granules of 2 to 5 mkm. diameter, the whole amount in each cell being agglutinated, so as to form a coherent mass.

Chemical Composition—Grains of paradise contain a small proportion of essential oil; 53 lb. yielded us only 2½ oz., equivalent to nearly 0·30 per cent. The oil is faintly yellowish, neutral, of an agreeable odour reminding one of the seeds, and of an aromatic, not acrid taste. It has a sp. gr. at 15·5° C., of 0·825. It is but sparingly soluble in absolute alcohol or in spirit of wine; but mixes clearly with bisulphide of carbon; it dissolves iodine without explosion. When saturated with dry hydrochloric gas, no solid compound is formed.

The oil begins to boil at about 236° C., and the chief bulk of it distills at 257°-258°: the residual part is a thick brownish liquid. Examined in a column of 50 mm. long, the crude oil deviates 1·9° to the left. The portion passing over at 257°-258° deviates 1·2°, the residue 2° to the left. The optical behaviour is consequently in favour of the supposition that the oil is homogeneous. This is corroborated by the results of three elementary analyses which lead to the formula C₂₀H₃₂O.

In order to ascertain whether the seed contains a fatty oil, 10 grammes, powdered with quartz, were exhausted with boiling ether. This gave upon evaporation 0·583 grm. of a brown viscid residue, almost devoid of odour, but of intense pungency. As it was entirely soluble in glacial acetic acid or in spirit of wine, we may consider it a resin, and not to contain any fatty matter.

The seeds, dried at 100° C., afforded us 2·15 per cent. of ash, which, owing to the presence of manganese, had a green hue.

Commerce—Grains of paradise are chiefly shipped from the settlements on the Gold Coast, of which Cape Coast Castle and Accra are the more important. Official returns show that the exports in 1871 from this district were as follows:—to Great Britain 85,502 lb., the United States 35,630 lb., Germany 28,501 lb., France 27,125 lb., Holland 14,250 lb.—total, 191,011 lb. (1705 cwt.) In 1872 the total shipments amounted to the enormous quantity of 620,191 lb., valued at £10,303; in 1875 only 151,783 lb., valued at £912, were exported.

Uses—The seeds are used in cattle medicines, occasionally as a condiment, but chiefly, we believe, to give a fiery pungency to cordials.

Orchidaceæ.

Salep.

Radix Salep, Radix Satyrii; Salep; F. Salep; G. Salepknollen.

Botanical Origin—Most, if not all, species of Orchis found in Europe and Northern Asia are provided with tubers which, when duly prepared, are capable of furnishing salep. Of those actually so used, the following are the more important, namely—Orchis mascula L., O. Morio L., O. militaris L., O. ustulata L., O. pyramidalis L., O. coriophora L., and O. longicruris Link. These species which have the tubers entire are natives of the greater part of Central and Southern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and Asia Minor.

The following species with palmate or lobed tubers have a geographical area no less extensive, namely O. maculata L., O. saccifera Brongn., O. conopsea L., and O. latifolia L. The last named reaches North-Western India and Tibet; and O. conopsea occurs in Amurland in the extreme east of Asia.

The salep of the Indian bazaars, known as Sālib misrī, for fine qualities of which the most extravagant prices are paid by wealthy orientals, is derived from certain species of Eulophia, as E. campestris Lindl., E. herbacea Lindl., and probably others.

History—Under the superstitious influence of the so-called doctrine of signatures, salep has had for ages a reputation in Eastern countries as a stimulant of the generative powers; and many Europeans who have lived in India, although not prepared to admit the extravagant virtues ascribed to it by Hindus and Mahommedans, yet regard it as a valuable nutrient in the sick-room.

The drug was known to Dioscorides and the Arabians, as well as to the herbalists and physicians of the middle ages, by whom it was mostly prescribed in the fresh state. Gerarde (1636) has given excellent figures of the various orchids whose tubers, says he, “our age useth.”

Geoffroy having recognized the salep imported from the Levant to be the tubers of an orchis, pointed out in 1740 how it might be prepared from the species indigenous to France.

Collection—The tubers are dug up after the plant has flowered, and the shrivelled ones having been thrown aside, those which are plump are washed, strung on threads and scalded. By this process their vitality is destroyed, and the drying is easily effected by exposure to the sun or to a gentle artificial heat. Though white and juicy when fresh, they become by drying hard and horny, and lose their bitterish taste and peculiar odour.

Salep is largely collected near Melassa (Milas) and Mughla (or Moola), south-east of Smyrna, and also brought there from Mersina, opposite the north-eastern cape (Andrea) of Cyprus. The drug found in English trade is mostly imported from Smyrna. That sold in Germany is partly obtained from plants growing wild in the Taunus mountains, Westerwald, Rhön, the Odenwald, and in Franconia. Salep is also collected in Greece, and used in that country and Turkey in the form of decoction, which is sweetened with honey and taken as an early morning drink. The salep of India is produced on the hills of Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Kabul and Bokhara; the Neilgherry Hills in the south, and even Ceylon are said likewise to afford it.

Description—Levant salep, such as is found in the English market, consists of tubers half an inch to an inch in length, of ovoid or oblong form, often pointed at the lower end, and rounded at the upper where is a depressed scar left by the stem; palmate tubers are unfrequent. They are generally shrunken and contorted, covered with a roughly granular skin, pale brown, translucent, very hard and horny, with but little odour and a slight not unpleasant taste. After maceration in water for several hours, they regain their original form and volume. German salep is more translucent and gummy-looking, and has the aspect of being more trimmed and prepared.

Microscopic Structure—The fresh tuber exhibits on transverse section a few outer rows of thin-walled cells rich in starch. These are followed by parenchyme of elongated colourless cells likewise containing starch, and isolated bundles of acicular crystals of oxalate of calcium. In this parenchyme, there are numerous larger cells filled with homogenous mucilage. Small vascular bundles are irregularly scattered throughout the tuber. In Orchis mascula and O. latifolia the starch grains are nearly globular, and about 25 mkm. in diameter. In dried salep the cell-walls are distorted and the starch grains agglomerated.

Chemical Composition—The most important constituent of salep is a sort of mucilage, the proportions of which according to Dragendorff (1865) amounts to 48 per cent.; but it is doubtless subject to great variation. Salep yields this mucilage to cold water, forming a solution which is turned blue by iodine, and mixes clearly with neutral acetate of lead like gum arabic. On addition of ammonia, an abundant precipitate is formed. Mucilage of salep precipitated by alcohol and then dried, is coloured violet or blue, if moistened with a solution of iodine in iodide of potassium. The dry mucilage is readily soluble in ammoniacal solution of oxide of copper; when boiled with nitric acid, oxalic, but not mucic acid is produced. In these two respects, the mucilage of salep agrees with cellulose, rather than with gum arabic. In the large cells in which it is contained, it does not exhibit any stratification, so that its formation does not appear due to a metamorphosis of the cell-wall itself. Mucilage of salep contains some nitrogen and inorganic matter, of which it is with difficulty deprived by repeated precipitation by alcohol.

It is to the mucilage just described that salep chiefly owes its power of forming with even 40 parts of water a thick jelly, which becomes still thicker on addition of magnesia or borax. The starch however assists in the formation of this jelly; yet its amount is very small, or even nil in the tuber bearing the flowering stem, whereas the young lateral tuber abounds in it. The starch so deposited is evidently consumed in the subsequent period of vegetation, thus explaining the fact that tubers are found, the decoction of which is not rendered blue by iodine. Salep contains also sugar and albumin, and when fresh, a trace of volatile oil. Dried at 110° C., it yields 2 per cent. of ash, consisting chiefly of phosphates and chlorides of potassium and calcium (Dragendorff).

Commerce—The shipments of salep from Smyrna are about 5000 okkas (one okka equal to 283·2 lb. avdp. = 128·5 kilogrammes) annually.

Uses—Salep possesses no medicinal powers; but from its property of forming a jelly with a large proportion of water, it has come to be regarded as highly nutritious,—a popular notion in which we do not concur. A decoction flavoured with sugar and spice, or wine, is an agreeable drink for invalids, but is not much used in England.

Vanilla.

Vanilla; F. and G. Vanille.

Botanical Origin—Vanilla planifolia Andrews—Indigenous to the hot regions (tierra caliente) of Eastern Mexico, diffused by cultivation through other tropical countries. The plant, which is rather fleshy and has large greenish inodorous flowers, grows in moist, shady forests, climbing the trees by means of its aërial roots.

History—The Spaniards found vanilla in use in Mexico as a condiment to chocolate, and by them it was brought to Europe; but it must have long remained very scarce, for Clusius, who received a specimen in 1602 from Morgan, apothecary to Queen Elizabeth, described it as Lobus oblongus aromaticus, without being in the least aware of its native country or uses. In the Thesaurus of Hernandez there is a figure and account of the plant under the name of Araco aromatico.

In the time of Pomet (1694) vanilla was imported by way of Spain, and was much used in France for flavouring chocolate and scenting tobacco. It had a place in the materia medica of the London Pharmacopœia of 1721, and was well known to the druggists of the first half of the 18th century, after which it seems to have gradually disappeared from the shops. Of late times it has been imported in great abundance, and is now plentifully used, not only by the chocolate manufacturer, but also by the cook and confectioner.

Cultivation—The culture of vanilla is very simple. Shoots about three feet long having been fastened to trees, and scarcely touching the ground, soon strike roots on to the bark, and form plants which commence to produce fruit in three years, and remain productive for thirty to forty.

The fertilization of the flower is naturally brought about by insect agency. This was practised as early as 1830 by Neumann in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and in 1837 by Morren, the director of the Botanical Garden of Liège, since which the production of the pods has been successfully carried on in all tropical countries without the aid of insects. Even in European forcing houses the plant produces fruits of full size, which for aroma bear comparison with those of Mexico.

In vanilla plantations the pods are not allowed to arrive at complete maturity, but are gathered when their green colour begins to change. According to the statements of De Vriese, they are dried by a rather circuitous process, namely by exposing them to heat alternately uncovered, and wrapped in woollen cloths, whereby they are artificially ripened, and acquire their ultimate aroma and dark hue. They are then tied together into small bundles.

In Réunion the drying of the pods is performed since 1857 by dipping them previously in boiling water.

Description—The fruit when fresh is of the thickness of the little finger, obscurely triquetrous, opening longitudinally by two unequal valves. It is fleshy, firm, smooth, and plump; when cut transversely it exudes an inodorous slimy juice, abounding in spiculæ of oxalate of calcium. It is one-celled, with a three-sided cavity, from each wall of which projects a two-branched placenta, each branch subdividing into two backward-curling lobes. There are thus in all 12 ridges, which traverse the fruit lengthwise, and bear the seeds. Fine hair-like papillæ line as a thick fringe the three angles of the cavity, and secrete the odorous matter, which after drying is diffused through the whole pod. The papillæ likewise contain drops of oil, which is freely absorbed by the paper in which a pod is wrapped. That the odorous matter is not resident in the fleshy exterior mass we have ascertained by slicing off this portion of a fresh fruit and drying it separately; the interior alone proved to be fragrant.

The vanilla of commerce occurs in the form of fleshy, flexible, stick-like pods, 3 to 8 inches long, and ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch wide, of a compressed cylindrical form, attenuated and hooked at the stalk end. The surface is finely furrowed lengthwise, shining, unctuous, and often beset with an efflorescence of minute colourless crystals. The pod splits lengthwise into two unequal valves, revealing a multitude of minute, shining, hard, black seeds of lenticular form, imbedded in a viscid aromatic juice.

The finest vanilla is the Mexican. Bourbon Vanilla, which is the more plentiful, is generally shorter and less intense in colour, and commands a lower price.

Microscopic Structure—The inner half of the pericarp contains about 20 vascular bundles, arranged in a diffuse ring. The epidermis is formed of a row of tabular thick-walled cells, containing a granular brown substance. The middle layer of the pericarp is composed of large thin-walled cells, the outer of which are axially extended, while those towards the centre have a cubic or spherical form. All contain drops of yellowish fat and brown granular masses, which do not decidedly exhibit the reaction of tannin. The tissue further encloses needles of oxalate of calcium and prisms of vanillin.

On the walls of the outer cells of the pericarp are deposited spiral fibres, which occur still more conspicuously in the aërial roots and in the parenchyme of the leaves of other orchids. The placentæ are coated with delicate, thin-walled cells.

Chemical Composition—Vanilla owes the fragrance for which it is remarkable to Vanillin, which is found in a crystalline state in the interior or on the surface of the fruit, or dissolved in the viscid oily liquid surrounding the seeds. It was formerly regarded as cinnamic or benzoic acid, and then as cumarin, until Gobley (1858) demonstrated its peculiar nature.

The admirable researches of Tiemann and Haarmann performed in Hofmann’s laboratory at Berlin (1874-1876) have shown that vanillin is constituted according to the formula

OCH₃

C₆H₃ OH.

CHO

It is the aldehyde. It is the aldehyde of methyl-protocatechuic acid, and like other aldehydes yields a crystallized compound with the bisulphites of alkalis. This is obtained by shaking an ethereal extract (e) of vanilla, with a saturated solution of bisulphite of sodium. The vanillin compound remaining in aqueous solution is mixed with sulphuric acid and ether; the latter on evaporation affords crystals of vanillin. They melt at 81°, and may be sublimed by cautiously heating them. Vanillin is but sparingly soluble in cold water, and requires about 11 parts of it at 100° C. for solution; it strikes a fine dark violet with perchloride of iron.

The said chemists have further demonstrated that vanillin may be formed artificially. In the sapwood of pines there occurs a substance called Coniferin, C₁₆H₂₂O₈ + 2 H₂O, first observed in 1861 by Hartig. By means of emulsin coniferin taking up H₂O, can be resolved into sugar and another crystallizable substance:—C₁₆H₂₂O₈ + H₂O = C₆H₁₂O₆ + C₁₀H₁₂O₃. The second substance thus derived may be collected by means of ether, which dissolves neither coniferin nor sugar. By oxidizing it, or coniferin itself, by bichromate of potassium and sulphuric acid, Vanillin is obtained. The latter has been for sometime manufactured in that way by Tiemann, but now eugenol (see p. 285) is used for that purpose. Another source for vanillin is benzoin (p. 409).

The amount of vanillin was stated by Haarmann and Tiemann to be 1·69 per cent. in Mexican vanillin, from 1·9 to 2·48 in the Bourbon variety, and 2·75 in that from Java. The so-called Vanillon affords only 0·4 to 0·7 per cent. of vanillin.

From the above-mentioned ethereal solution (e), after it has been deprived of vanillin, vanillate of sodium may be removed by a dilute solution of carbonate of sodium. On acidulating the aqueous solution crystals of vanillic acid,

OCH₃

C₆H₃ OH.

COOH

are precipitated. If the ether of the solution (e), after it has been treated with carbonate of sodium, is allowed to evaporate, a mixture of fatty substances and a resin are obtained. The latter has a peculiar odour, somewhat suggestive of castoreum; vanillic acid is almost inodorous.

Leutner (1872) also found in vanilla fatty and waxy matter 11·8, resin 4·0, gum and sugar 16·5 per cent.; and obtained by incineration of the drug 4·6 per cent. of ash.

Production and Commerce—The chief seats of vanilla-production in Mexico are the slopes of the Cordilleras, north-west of Vera Cruz, the centre of the culture being Jicaltepec, in the vicinity of Nautla. The finest specimens were contributed in 1878 to the Paris Exhibition from Agapito, Fonticilla, Misantla, Papantla, also from Teziutlan, province of Puebla. There are likewise “Baynillales,” plantations of vanilla, on the western declivity of the Cordilleras in the State of Oaxaca, and in lesser quantity in those of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Yucatan. The eastern parts of Mexico exported in 1864, by way of Vera Cruz and Tampico, about 20,000 kilo. of vanilla, chiefly to Bordeaux. Since then the production seems to have much declined, the importation into France having been only 6,896 kilo. in 1871, and 1,938 in 1872.

The cultivation of vanilla in the small French colony of Réunion or Bourbon (40 miles long by 27 miles broad), introduced by Marchant in 1817 from Mauritius, has of late been very successful, notwithstanding many difficulties occasioned by the severe cyclones which sweep periodically over the island, and by microscopic fungi which greatly injured the plant. In 1849 the export of vanilla from Réunion was 3 kilogrammes, in 1877 it reached 30,973 kilogrammes. The neighbouring island of Mauritius also produces vanilla, of which it shipped in 1872 7,139 lbs., in 1877 the quantity was 20,481 lbs. There is likewise a very extensive cultivation of vanilla in Java.

Vanilla comes into the market chiefly by way of France, which country, according to the official statistics, imported in 1871, 29,914 kilo. (65,981 lbs.); in 1872, 26,587 (58,643 lbs.); in 1874 that quantity amounted to 34,906 kilo.

Uses—Vanilla has long ceased to be used in medicine, at least in this country, but is often sold by druggists for flavouring chocolate, ices, creams, and confectionery.

Iridaceæ.

Rhizoma Iridis.

Radix Iridis Florentinæ; Orris Root; F. Racine d’Iris; G. Veilchenwurzel.

Botanical Origin—This drug is derived from three species of Iris, namely:—

1. Iris germanica L., a perennial plant with beautiful large deep blue flowers, common about Florence and Lucca, ascending to the region of the chestnut. It is also found dispersed throughout Central and Southern Europe, and in Northern India and Morocco; and is one of the commonest plants of the gardens round London, where it is known as the Blue Flag.

2. I. pallida Lam., a plant differing from the preceding by flowers of a delicate pale blue, growing wild in stony places in Istria. It is abundant about Florence and Lucca in the region of the olive, but is a doubtful native.

3. I. florentina L., closely allied to I. pallida, yet bearing large white flowers, is indigenous to the coast region of Macedonia and the south-western shores of the Black Sea, Hersek, in the Gulf of Ismid, and about Adalia in Asia Minor. It also occurs in the neighbourhood of Florence and Lucca, but in our opinion only as a naturalized plant.

These three species, but especially I. germanica and I. pallida, are cultivated for the production of orris root in the neighbourhood of Florence. They are planted on the edges of terraces and on waste, stony places contiguous to cultivated ground. I. florentina is seldom found beyond the precincts of villas, and is far less common than the other two.

History—In ancient Greece and Rome, orris root was largely used in perfumery; and Macedonia, Elis, and Corinth were famous for their unguents of iris. Theophrastus and Dioscorides were well acquainted with orris root; the latter, as well as Pliny, remarks that the best comes from Illyricum, the next from Macedonia, and a sort still inferior from Libya; and that the root is used as a perfume and medicine. Visiani considers that Iris germanica is the Illyrian iris of the ancients, which is highly probable, seeing that throughout Dalmatia (the ancient Illyricum) that species is plentiful, and I. florentina and I. pallida do not occur. At what period the two latter were introduced into Northern Italy we have no direct evidence, but it was probably in the early middle ages. The ancient arms of Florence, a white lily or iris on a red shield, seem to indicate that that city was famed for the growth of these plants. Petrus de Crescentiis of Bologna, who flourished in the 13th century, mentions the cultivation of the white as well as of the purple iris, and states at what season the root should be collected for medicinal use.

But the true Illyrian drug was held to be the best; and Valerius Cordus laments that it was being displaced by the Florentine, though it might easily be obtained through the Venetians.

Orris root mixed with anise was used in England as a perfume for linen as early as 1480 (p. 311), under which date it is mentioned in the Wardrobe Accounts of Edward IV.

All the species of iris we have named were in cultivation in England in the time of Gerarde,—that is, the latter end of the 16th century. The starch of the rhizome was formerly reckoned medicinal, and directions for its preparation are to be found in the Traicté de la Chymie of Le Febvre, i. (1660) 310.

Production—The above-mentioned species of iris are known to the Tuscan peasantry by the one name of Giaggiolo. The rhizomes are collected indiscriminately, the chief quantity being doubtless furnished by the two more plentiful species, I. germanica and I. pallida. They are dug up in August, are then peeled, trimmed, and laid out in the sunshine to dry, the larger bits cut off being reserved for replanting. At the establishment of Count Strozzi, founded in 1806 at Pontasieve near Florence, which lies in the midst of the orris district, the rhizomes, collected from the peasants by itinerant dealers, are separated into different qualities, as selected (scelti) and sorts (in sorte), and are ultimately offered in trade either entire, or in small bits (frantumi), parings (raspature), powder (polvere di giaggiolo o d’ ireos), or manufactured into orris peas.

The growing of orris is only a small branch of industry, the crops being a sort of side-product, but it is nevertheless shared between the tenant and landowner as is usual on the Tuscan System of husbandry.

In the mountainous neighbourhood of Verona, the rhizomes of Giglio celeste or Giglio selvatico, i.e., Iris germanica, are collected and chiefly brought to the small places of Tregnano and Illasi, north-east of Verona. The peasants distinguish the selected long roots (radice dritta), the knotty roots (radice groppo) which are used for the issue-peas, and the fragments (scarto) employed in perfumery.

Some orris root is also exported from Botzen in southern Tyrol.

Description.—The rootstock is fleshy, jointed and branching, creeping horizontally near the surface of the ground. It is formed in old plants of the annual joints of five or six successive years, the oldest of which are evidently in a state of decay. These joints are mostly dichotomous, subcylindrical, a little compressed vertically, gradually becoming obconical, and obtaining a maximum size when about three years old. They are 3 to 4 inches long and sometimes more than 2 inches thick. Those only of the current year emit leaves from their extremities. The rhizome is externally yellowish-brown, internally white and juicy, with an earthy smell and acrid taste. By drying, it gradually acquires its pleasant violet odour, but it is said not to attain its maximum of fragrance until it has been kept for two years.

We have carefully compared with each other the fresh rhizomes of the three species under notice, but are not able to point out any definite character for distinguishing them apart.

Dried orris root as found in the shops occurs in pieces of 2 to 4 inches long, and often as much as 1¼ inches wide. A full-sized piece is seen to consist of an elongated, irregularly subconical portion emitting at its broader end one or two (rarely three) branches which, having been cut short in the process of trimming, have the form of short, broad cones, attached by their apices to the parent rootstock. The rootstock is flattened, somewhat arched, often contorted, shrunken and furrowed. The lower side is marked with small circular scars, indicating the point of insertion of rootlets. The brown outer bark has been usually entirely removed by peeling and paring; and the dried rhizome is of a dull, opaque white, ponderous, firm and compact. It has an agreeable and delicate odour of violets, and a bitterish, rather aromatic taste, with subsequent acridity.

A sort of orris root which has been dried without the removal of the outer peel, is found under the name of Irisa in the Indian bazaars, and now and then in the London market. It is, we suppose, the produce of Iris germanica L. (I. nepalensis Wall.), which, according to Hooker, is cultivated in Kashmir. Orris root of rather low quality is now often imported from Morocco; it is obtained, we believe, exclusively from I. germanica.

Microscopic Structure—On transverse section, the white bark about 2 mm. broad, is seen to be separated by a fine brown line from the faintly yellowish woody tissue. The latter is traversed by numerous vascular bundles, in diffuse and irregular rings, and exhibits here and there small shining crystals of oxalate of calcium. It is made up uniformly of large thick-walled spherical porous cells, loaded with starch granules, which are oval, rather large and very numerous; prisms of calcium oxalate are also visible. The latter were noticed already by one of the earliest microscopic observers, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, about the year 1716. The spiral vessels are small and run in very various directions. The foregoing description is applicable to any one of the three species we have named.

Chemical Composition—When orris root is distilled with water, a crystalline substance, called Orris Camphor, is found floating on the aqueous distillate. This substance, which we first obtained from the laboratory of Messrs. Herrings & Co. of London, is yielded, as we learn from Mr. Umney, to the extent of 0·12 per cent.—that is to say, 3 cwt. 3 qrs. 23 lb. of rhizome afforded of it 8½ ounces. Messrs. Schimmel & Co. of Leipzig also presented us with the same substance, of which they obtain usually 0·60 to 0·80 per cent. Orris camphor has the exquisite and persistent fragrance of the drug; we have proved that this presumed stearoptene or camphor of orris root consists of myristic acid, C₁₄H₂₈O₂ (see page 508), impregnated with the minute quantity of essential oil occurring in the drug. The oil itself would appear not to pre-exist in the living root, but to be formed on drying it.

By exhausting orris root with spirit of wine, a soft brownish resin is obtained, together with a little tannic matter. The resin has a slightly acrid taste; the tannin strikes a green colour with persalts of iron.

Commerce—Orris root is shipped from Leghorn, Trieste and Mogador,—from the last named port to the extent in 1876 of 834 cwt. There are no data to show the total imports into Great Britain. France imported in the year 1870 about 50 tons of orris root.

Uses—Frequently employed as an ingredient in tooth-powders, and in France for making issue-peas; but the chief application is as a perfume.

Crocus.

Croci stigmata; Saffron; F. and G. Saffran.

Botanical Origin—Crocus sativus L., a small plant with a fleshy bulb-like corm and grassy leaves, much resembling the common Spring Crocus of the gardens, but blossoming in the autumn. It has an elegant purple flower, with a large orange-red stigma, the three pendulous divisions of which are protruded beyond the perianth.

The Saffron Crocus is supposed to be indigenous to Greece, Asia Minor, and perhaps Persia, but it has been so long under cultivation in the East that its primitive home is somewhat doubtful.

History—Saffron, either as a medicine, condiment, perfume, or dye, has been highly prized by mankind from a remote period, and has played an important part in the history of commerce.

Under the Hebrew name Carcôm, which is supposed to be the root of the word Crocus, the plant is alluded to by Solomon; and as Κρόκος, by Homer, Hippocrates, Theophrastus, and Theocritus. Virgil and Columella mention the saffron of Mount Tmolus; the latter also names that of Corycus in Cilicia, and of Sicily, both which localities are alluded to as celebrated for the drug by Dioscorides and Pliny.

Saffron was an article of traffic on the Red Sea in the first century; and the author of the Periplus remarks that Κρόκος is exported from Egypt to Southern Arabia, and from Barygaza in the gulf of Cambay. It was well known under the name kunkuma to the earlier Hindu writers.

It was cultivated at Derbend and Ispahan in Persia, and in Transoxania in the 10th century, whence it is not improbable the plant was carried to China, for according to the Chinese it came thither from the country of the Mahomedans. Chinese writers have recorded that under the Yuen dynasty (.d. 1280-1368), it became the custom to mix Sa-fa-lang (Saffron) with food.

There is evidence to show that saffron was a cultivated production of Spain as early as a.d. 961; yet it is not so mentioned, but only as an eastern drug, by St. Isidore, archbishop of Seville in the 7th century. As to France, Italy, and Germany, it is commonly said that the saffron crocus was introduced into these countries by the Crusaders. Porchaires, a French nobleman, is stated to have brought some bulbs to Avignon towards the end of the 14th century, and to have commenced the cultivation in the Comtat Venaissin, where it existed down to recent times. About the same time, the growing of saffron is said to have been introduced by the same person into the district of Gâtinais, south of Paris. At that period, saffron was one of the productions of Cyprus, with which island France was then, through the princes of Lusignan, particularly related.

During the middle ages, the saffron cultivated at San Gemignano in Tuscany was an important article of exportation to Genoa. That of Aquila in the Abruzzi was also famous, and used to be distinguished in price-lists till the beginning of the present century; the culture of saffron is still going on there to a small extent. The growing of saffron in Sicily, which was noticed even by Columella, is carried on to the present day, but the quantity produced is insufficient even for home consumption. In Germany and Switzerland, where a more rigorous climate must have increased the difficulties of cultivation, the production of saffron was an object of industry in many localities.

The saffron crocus is said to have been introduced into England during the reign of Edward III. (a.d. 1327-1377). Two centuries later English saffron was even exported to the Continent, for in a priced list of the spices sold by the apothecaries of the north of France, a.d. 1565-70, mention is made of three sorts of saffron, of which “Safren d’Engleterre” is the most valuable. It was evidently produced in considerable quantities, for in 1682 we find in the tariff of the “Apotheke” of Celle, Hanover, crocus austriacus optimus, and Crocus communis anglicus.

In the beginning of the last century (1723-28), the cultivation of saffron was carried on in what is described by a contemporary writer as—“all that large tract of ground that lies between Saffron Walden and Cambridge, in a circle of about 10 miles diameter.” The same writer remarks that saffron was formerly grown in several other counties of England. The cultivation of the crocus about Saffron Walden, which was in full activity when Norden wrote in 1594, had ceased in 1768, and about Cambridge at nearly the same time. Yet the culture must have lingered in a few localities, for in the early part of the present century a little English saffron was still brought every year from Cambridgeshire to London, and sold as a choice drug to those who were willing to pay a high price for it.

Saffron was employed in ancient times to a far greater extent than at the present day. It entered into all sorts of medicines, both internal and external; and it was in common use as a colouring and flavouring ingredient of various dishes for the table,. The drug, from its inevitable costliness, has been liable to sophistication from the earliest times. Both Dioscorides and Pliny refer to the frauds practised on it, the latter remarking—“adulteratur nihil æquè.”

During the middle ages the severest enactments were not only made, but were actually carried into effect, against those who were guilty of sophisticating saffron, or even of possessing the article in an adulterated state. Thus at Pisa, in a.d. 1305, the fundacarii, or keepers of the public warehouses, were required by oath and heavy penalties to denounce the owners of any falsified saffron consigned to their custody. The Pepperers of London about the same period were also held responsible to check dishonest tampering with saffron.

In France, an edict of Henry II., of 18th March, 1550, recites the advantages derived from the cultivation of saffron in many parts of the kingdom, and enacts the confiscation and burning of the drug when falsified, and corporal punishment of offenders.

The authorities in Germany were far more severe. A Safranschau (Saffron inspection) was established at Nuremberg in 1441, in which year 13 lb. of saffron was publicly burnt at the Schönen Brunnen in that city. In 1444, Jobst Findeker was burnt together with his adulterated saffron! And in 1456, Hans Kölbele, Lienhart Frey, and a woman, implicated in falsifying saffron, were buried alive. The Safranschau was still in vigour as late as 1591: but new regulations for the inspection of saffron were passed in 1613. There was also in the same city a Gewürzschau, or Spice-inspection, from 1441 to 1797. Similar inspections were established in most German towns during the middle ages.

Description—The flower of the saffron crocus has a style 3 to 4 inches long, which in its lower portion is colourless, and included within the tube of the perianth. In its upper part it becomes yellow, and divides into three tubular, filiform, orange-red stigmas, each about an inch in length. The stigmas expand towards their ends, and the tube of which they consist is toothed at the edge and slit on its inner side. The stigma is the only part officinal, and alone is rich in colouring matter.

Commercial saffron (Hay Saffron of the druggists) is a loose mass of thread-like stigmas, which when unbroken are united in threes at the upper extremity of the yellow style. It is unctuous to the touch, tough and flexible; of a deep orange-red, peculiar aromatic smell, and bitter and rather pungent taste. It is hygroscopic and not easily pulverized; it loses by drying at 100° C. about 12 per cent. of moisture, which it quickly reabsorbs.

The colouring power of saffron is very remarkable: we have found that a single grain rubbed to fine powder with a little sugar will impart a distinct tint of yellow to 700,000 grains (10 gallons) of water.

Microscopic Structure—The tissue of the stigma consists of very thin, sinuous, closely-felted, thread-shaped cells, and small spiral vessels. The yellow colouring matter penetrates the whole, and is partly deposited in granules. The microscope likewise exhibits oil-drops, and small lumps, probably of a solid fat. Large isolated pollen grains are also present.

Chemical Composition—The splendid colouring matter of saffron has long been known as Polychroit; but in 1851 Quadrat, who instituted some fresh researches on the drug, gave it the name of Crocin, which was also adopted in 1858 by Rochleder. Weiss in 1867 has shown that it is a glucoside, for which he retains the name of Polychroit, while the new colouring matter which results from its decomposition he terms Crocin. It agrees with the Crocetin of Rochleder.

Polychroit was prepared by Weiss in the following manner: saffron was treated with ether, by which fat, wax, and essential oil were removed; and it was then exhausted with water. From the aqueous solution, gummy matters and some inorganic salts were precipitated by strong alcohol. After the separation of these substances, polychroit was precipitated by addition of ether. Thus obtained, it is an orange-red, viscid, deliquescent substance, which, dried over sulphuric acid, becomes brittle and of a fine ruby colour. It has a sweetish taste, but is devoid of odour, readily soluble in spirit of wine or water, and sparingly in absolute alcohol. By dilute acids, it is decomposed into Crocin, sugar, and an aromatic volatile oil having the smell of saffron. Weiss gives the following formula for this decomposition:—

C₄₈H₆₀O₁₈ + H₂O = 2(C₁₆H₁₈O₆) · C₁₀H₁₄O · C₆H₁₂O₆.

polychroit crocin essential
oil sugar

Crocin is a red powder, insoluble in ether, easily soluble in alcohol, and precipitable from this solution on addition of ether. It is only slightly soluble in water, but freely in an alkaline solution, from which an acid precipitates it in purple-red flecks. Strong sulphuric and nitric acids occasion the same colours as with polychroit; the former producing deep blue, changing to violet and brown, and the latter green, yellow, and finally brown. It is remarkable that hydrocarbons of the benzol class do not dissolve the colouring matter of saffron.

The oil obtained by decomposing crocin is heavier than water; it boils at about 209° C., and is easily altered,—even by water. It is probably identical with the volatile oil obtainable to the extent of one per cent. from the drug itself, and to which its odour is due.

Saffron contains sugar (glucose?), besides that obtained by the decomposition of polychroit. The drug leaves after incineration 5 to 6 per cent. of ash.

Production and Commerce—In France the cultivation is carried on by small peasant proprietors; the flowers are collected at the end of September or in the beginning of October. The stigmas are quickly taken out, and immediately dried on sieves over a gentle fire, to which they are exposed for only half an hour. According to Dumesnil 7,000 to 8,000 flowers are required for yielding 500 grammes (17½ oz.) of fresh saffron, which by drying is reduced to 100 grammes.

Notwithstanding the high price of saffron, its cultivation is by no means always profitable, from the many difficulties by which it is attended. Besides occasional injury from weather, the bulbs are often damaged by parasitic fungi as stated by Duhamel in 1728 and again by Montagne in 1848.

The most considerable quantity of saffron is now produced in Spain, namely in Lower Arragon, in Novelda near Alicante, in the province Albacete (Northern Murcia), in La Mancha, near Huelva, and also near Palma in the island of Mallorca. It is brought into commerce as Alicante and Valencia Saffron. The quantity of saffron exported from Spain in 1864 was valued at £190,062; in 1865, £135,316; in 1866, £47,083. The drug was chiefly exported to France.

French saffron, which enjoys a better reputation for purity than the Spanish, is cultivated in the arrondissement of Pithiviers-en-Gâtinais, in the department of the Loiret, which district annually furnishes a quantity valued at 1,500,000 (£60,000) to 1,800,000 francs. The exports of France in 1875 were 97,021 kilogrammes, 84,337 of which being imported from Spain.

In Austria, Maissau, north-east of Krems on the Danube, still produces excellent saffron, though only to a very small extent; the district was formerly celebrated for the drug. Saffron is produced in considerable quantity in Ghayn, an elevated mountain region separating Western Afghanistan from Persia. A very little of inferior quality is collected at Pampur in Kashmír, under heavy imposts of the Maharaja. Saffron is also cultivated in some districts of China. Finally, the cultivation has been introduced into the United States, and a little saffron is collected by the German inhabitants of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But in almost all countries the cultivation of saffron is on the decline, and in very many districts has altogether ceased.

The imports of saffron into the United Kingdom amounted in 1870 to 43,950 lb., valued at £95,690. The article is largely exported to India, but there are no general statistics to show the amount. Bombay imported in the year 1872-73, 21,994 lb., value £35,115. It is a curious fact that now Spanish saffron finds regularly its way to India.

Uses—Saffron is of no value for any medicinal effects, and retains a place in the pharmacopœia solely on the ground of its utility as a colouring agent. A peculiar preference for it as a condiment exists in various countries, but especially in Austria, Germany and some districts of Switzerland. This predilection prevails even in England—at least in Cornwall, where the use of saffron for colouring cakes is still common. Saffron is largely used by the natives of India in religious rites, in medicine and for the colouring and flavouring of food.

As a dye-stuff saffron is no longer employed, at least in this country, its use having been superseded by less costly substances.

Adulteration—Saffron is often adulterated, but the frauds practised on it are not difficult of detection. Sometimes the falsification consists in the addition of florets of Calendula dyed with logwood, or of safflower, or the stamens of the saffron crocus, any of which may be detected if a small pinch of the drug be dropped on the surface of warm water, when the peculiar form of the saffron stigma will at once become evident.

Another adulteration of late much practised, and not always easy to detect by the eye, consists in coating genuine saffron with carbonate of lime, previously tinged orange-red. If a few shreds of such saffron be placed on the surface of water in a wineglass and gently stirred, the water will immediately become turbid, and the carbonate of lime will detach itself as a white powder and subside. Saffron thus adulterated will freely effervesce when dilute hydrochloric acid is dropped upon it. We have examined Alicante Saffron, the weight of which had been increased more than 20 per cent. by this fraudulent admixture. The earthy matter employed in sophisticating saffron is said to be sometimes emery powder, rendered adherent by honey. We have found that adulterated with carbonate of lime to leave from 12 to 28 per cent. of ash.

Palmæ.

Semen Arecæ.

Nuces Arecæ vel Betel; Areca Nuts, Betel Nuts; F. Semence ou Noix d’Arec; G. Arekanüsse, Betelnüsse.

Botanical Origin—Areca Catechu L., a most elegant palm, with a straight smooth trunk, 40 to 50 feet high and about 20 inches in circumference. The inflorescence is arranged on a branching spadix, with the male flowers on its upper portion and the female near its base. The tree is cultivated in the Malayan Archipelago, the warmer parts of the Indian Peninsula, Ceylon, Indo-China and the Phillippines. It is probably indigenous to the first-named region.

History—The Areca palm is mentioned in the Sanskrit writings as Guvāca. It is called in Chinese Pin-lang, a name apparently derived from Pinang, a designation for the tree in the Malay Islands, whence the Chinese anciently derived their supply of the seeds. The oldest Chinese work to mention the pin-lang is the San-fu-huang-tu, a description of Chang-an, the capital of the Emperor Wu-ti, b.c. 140-86. It is there stated that after the conquest of Yunnan, b.c. 111, some remarkable trees and plants of the south were taken to the capital, and among them more than 100 pin-lang, which were planted in the imperial gardens. Bretschneider, to whose researches we are indebted for this information, cites several other Chinese works, from the first century downwards, showing that areca nuts were brought from the then unsubdued provinces of Southern China, the Malayan Archipelago and India. The custom of presenting areca nut to a guest is alluded to in a work of the 4th century.

The Arabian writers, as for instance Ibn Batuta, were well acquainted with the areca nut, which they called Fófal, and with the Indian custom of masticating it with lime.

Areca nut, though held in great estimation among Asiatics as a masticatory, and supposed to strengthen the gums, sweeten the breath and improve digestion, has not until recently been regarded as possessing any particular medicinal powers beyond those of a mild astringent. It has often been administered as a vermifuge to dogs, and in India and China is given with the same intent to the human subject. Some successful trials recently made of it for the expulsion of tapeworm have led to it being included in the Additions to the British Pharmacopœia of 1867, published in 1874.

Description—The areca palm produces a smooth ovoid fruit, of the size of a small hen’s egg, slightly pointed at its upper end, and crowned with the remains of the stigmas. Its exterior consists of a thick pericarp, at first fleshy, but, when quite mature, composed of fine stringy fibres running lengthwise, with much coarser ones below them. This fibrous coat is consolidated into a thin crustaceous shell or endocarp, which surrounds the solitary seed. The latter has the shape of a very short rounded cone, scarcely an inch in height; it is depressed at the centre of the base, and has frequently a tuft of fibres on one side of the depression, indicating its connexion with the pericarp. The testa, which seems to be partially adherent to the endocarp, is obscurely defined, and inseparable from the nucleus. Its surface is conspicuously marked with a network of veins, running chiefly from the hilum. When a seed is split open, it is seen that these veins extend downwards into the white albumen, reaching almost to its centre, thus giving the seed a strong resemblance both in structure and appearance to a nutmeg. The embryo, which is small and conical, is seated at the base of the seed. Areca nuts are dense and ponderous, and very difficult to break or cut. They have when freshly broken a weak cheesy odour, and taste slightly astringent.

Microscopic Structure—The white horny albumen is made up of large thick-walled cells, loaded with an albuminoid matter, which on addition of iodine assumes a brown hue. The cell-walls display large pores, the structure of which, after boiling in caustic ley, becomes clearly evident in polarized light. The brown tissue which runs into the albumen is of loose texture, and resembles the corresponding structure in a nutmeg. The thin walls of its cells are marked with fine spiral striations, and in this tissue, as well as on the brown surface of the seed, delicate spiral vessels are scattered. All the brown cells assume a rich red if moistened with caustic ley, and a dingy green with ferric chloride.

Chemical Composition—We have exhausted the powder of the seeds, previously dried at 100° C., with ether; and thereby obtained a colourless solution, which after evaporation left an oily liquid, concreting on cooling. This fatty matter, representing 14 per cent. of the seed, was thoroughly crystalline and melted at 39° C. By saponification we obtained from it a crystalline fatty acid fusing at 41° C., which may consequently be a mixture of lauric and myristic acids. Some of the fatty matter was boiled with water: the water on evaporation afforded an extremely small trace of tannin but no crystals, which had catechin been present should have been left.

The powdered seeds which had been treated with ether were then exhausted by cold spirit of wine (·832), which afforded 14·77 per cent. (reckoned on the original seeds) of a red amorphous tannic matter, which after drying, proved to be but little soluble in water, whether cold or boiling. Submitting to destructive distillation, it afforded Pyrocatechin. Its aqueous solution is not altered by ferrous sulphate, unless an alkali is added, when it assumes a violet hue, with separation of a copious dark purplish precipitate. On addition of a ferric salt in minute quantity to the aqueous solution of the tannic matter, a fine green tint is produced, quickly turning brown by a further addition of the test, and violet by an alkali. An abundant dark precipitate is also formed.

The seeds having been exhausted by both ether and spirit of wine, were treated with water, which removed from them chiefly mucilage precipitable by alcohol. The alcohol thus used afforded on filtration traces of an acid, the examination of which was not pursued. After exhaustion with ether, spirit of wine and water, a dark brown solution is got by digesting the residue in ammonia: from this solution, an acid throws down an abundant brown precipitate, not soluble even in boiling alcohol. We have not been able to obtain crystals from an aqueous decoction of the seeds, nor by exhausting them directly with boiling spirit of wine. We have come therefore to the conclusion that Catechin (p. 243) is not a constituent of areca nuts, and that any extract, if ever made from them, must be essentially different to the Catechu of Acacia or of Nauclea, and rather to be considered a kind of tannic matter of the nature of Ratanhia-red or Cinchona-red.

By incinerating the powdered seeds, 2·26 per cent. were obtained of a brown ash, which, besides peroxide of iron, contained phosphate of magnesium.

Commerce—Areca nuts are sold in India both in the husk (pericarp) and without it, and the two sorts are enumerated in the Customs Returns under distinct heads. Their widespread consumption in the East gives rise to an enormous trade, of which some notion may be formed by a consideration of the few statistics bearing upon it which are accessible.

Thus, Ceylon exported of areca nuts in the year 1871, 66,543 cwt., value £62,593; in 1872, 71,715 cwt.,—the latter quantity entirely to India; in 1875 of the total export of 94,567 cwt. 86,446 were shipped to India.

The Madras Presidency largely trades in the same commodity. In the year 1872-1873 there were shipped thence to Bombay 43,958 cwt., besides about two millions of the entire fruit. An extensive traffic in areca nuts is carried on at Singapore and especially in Sumatra.

Uses—Powdered areca nut may be given for the expulsion of tapeworm in the dose of 4 to 6 drachms, taken in milk. The remedy should be administered to the patient after a fast of about twelve hours; some recommend the previous exhibition of a purgative. It is said to be efficacious against lumbricus as well as tænia.

The charcoal afforded by burning areca nuts in a close vessel is sold as a tooth powder; but except greater density, it possesses no advantage over the charcoal from ordinary wood.

As a masticatory areca nut is chewed with a little lime and a leaf of the Betel Pepper, Piper Betle L. The nut for this purpose is used in a young and tender state, or is prepared by boiling in water; it is sometimes combined with aromatics, as camphor or cardamom.

Sanguis Draconis.

Resina Draconis; Dragons Blood; F. Sang-dragon; G. Drachenblut.

Botanical Origin—Calamus Draco Willd. (Dæmonorhops Draco Mart.)—This is one of the Rotang or Rattan Palms, remarkable for their very long flexible stems, which climb among the branches of trees by means of spines on the leafstalk. The species under notice, called in Malay Rotang Jernang, grows in swampy forests of the Residency of Palembang and in the territory of Jambi, in Eastern Sumatra, and in Southern Borneo, which regions furnish the dragon’s blood of commerce. It is said to occur also in Penang and in various islands of the Sunda chain.

History—The substance which is mentioned by Dioscorides under the name of Κιννάβαρι, as a costly pigment and medicine brought from Africa, and which is also described by Pliny who distinguished it from minium, was certainly the resin called Dragon’s Blood. It was not however that of the Rotang Palm, Calamus Draco, or even of any tree of the Indian Archipelago, but was on the contrary a production of the island of Socotra (see p. 675).

Dragon’s blood is, we believe, not named by any of the earlier voyagers to the India islands. Ibn Batuta, who visited both Java and Sumatra between a.d. 1325 and 1349, and notices their producing benzoin (see p. 404), cloves, camphor, and aloes-wood, is silent about dragon’s blood. Barbosa, whose intelligent narrative (a.d. 1514) of the East Indies is full of reference to the trade and productions of the different localities he visited, states that aloes and dragon’s blood are produced in Socotra, but makes no mention of the latter commodity as found at Malacca, Java, Sumatra, or Borneo.

The fact we wish to prove is corroborated by the accounts of early commercial intercourse between the Chinese and Arabs recently published by Bretschneider. From the 10th to the 15th century there was carried on between these nations a trade, the objects of which were not only the productions of the Arabian Gulf and countries further north, but also those of the Indian Archipelago. One of the islands with which the Arabs and Persians carried on a great commerce was Sumatra, whence they obtained the precious camphor so much valued by the Chinese, but not, so far as it appears, the resin dragon’s blood. As to the productions brought from Arabia they are enumerated as Ostriches, Olibanum, Liquid Storax, Myrrh, and Dragon’s Blood, besides a few other articles not yet determined. It is worthy of remark that the Chinese are still the principal consumers of dragon’s blood, though like the rest of mankind they have to content themselves with the plentiful drug of Sumatra and Borneo, instead of the more ancient sort produced in Socotra.

The first clear account of the production of the resin in India is that given by Rumphius, who in his Herbarium Amboinense describes the process by which it is collected at Palembang.

Production—The fruit of Calamus Draco, which is produced in panicles in great profusion, is globose and of the size of a large cherry, clothed with smoothed downward-overlapping scales. These scales are sub-quadrangular, thick and shell-like, marked with a longitudinal furrow; the largest, which are found towards the middle of the fruit, are 2 lines long by 3 broad. At maturity the fruit is covered with an exudation of red resin, which encrusts it so abundantly that the form of the scales can hardly be seen.

The resin, which is naturally friable, is collected by gathering the fruits, and shaking or beating them in a sack, by which process it is soon separated. It is then sifted to remove from it scales and other portions of the fruit. By exposure to the heat of the sun or in a covered vessel to that of boiling water, the resin is so far softened that it can be moulded into sticks or balls, which are forthwith wrapped in a piece of palm leaf. It is thus that the best dragon’s blood, or jernang, is obtained. An inferior quality is got by boiling the pounded fruits in water, and making the resin into a mass, frequently with the addition of other substances by way of adulteration. The foregoing is the account of the manufacture of the drug given by Blume.

Description—Dragon’s Blood is found in commerce chiefly in two forms, known respectively as Reed and Lump.

1. Reed Dragon’s Blood (Dragon’s Blood in sticks, Sanguis draconis in baculis). Some of fine quality purchased in London in 1842 is in sticks 13 to 14 inches in length, and ¾ to 1 inch in diameter, neatly wrapped in palm leaf, secured by 8 or 9 transverse bands of some flexible grass. The average weight of each stick, including the enveloping leaf, is five ounces. The resin has evidently been wrapt up while soft, as the sticks are furrowed longitudinally by pressure of the surrounding leaf. The smooth surface is of an intense blackish-brown; when seen in thin splinters the resin appears transparent, and of a pure and brilliant crimson. The fractured surface looks resinous and rough, is a little porous, and contains numerous particles of the scales of the fruit. Rubbed on paper it leaves a red mark of not very splendid tint. Heated with alcohol it left 20 per cent. of pulverulent residue consisting chiefly of vegetable matter. Sticks of smaller size are more common.

2. Lump Dragon’s Blood (Sanguis draconis in massis) is imported in large rectangular blocks or irregular masses. From the fine Reed Dragon’s Blood, just described, it differs in containing a larger proportion of remains of the fruit, including numerous entire scales. Hence it has a coarser fracture, and the fractured surface is less intense in tint. Its taste is slightly acrid. Exhausted with alcohol it leaves a residue amounting in the specimen we tested to 27 per cent.

Dragon’s blood is abundantly soluble in the usual solvents of resins, namely, the alcohols (even in dilute spirit of wine), benzol, chloroform, bisulphide of carbon, and the oxygenated essential oils, as that of cloves. The residue left after the evaporation of these liquids is amorphous and of the original fine red colour. The drug is likewise dissolved by glacial acetic acid as well as by caustic soda; the latter solution on addition of an excess of acid yields a dingy brown, jelly-like precipitate, which on drying turns dark red like the original drug. In ether dragon’s blood is sparingly soluble, and still less so in oil of turpentine; but in the most volatile portions of petroleum, the so-called petroleum ether we find it to be entirely insoluble. It has a slightly sweetish and somewhat acrid taste; melts at about 120° C., evolving the aromatic but irritating fumes of benzoic acid; boiled with water the resin becomes soft and partially liquid.

Chemical Composition—Dragon’s blood is a peculiar resin, which according to Johnston answers to the formula C₂₀H₂₀O₄. By heating it and condensing the vapour an aqueous acid liquid is obtained, together with a heavy oily portion of a pungent burning taste and crystals of benzoic acid. The composition of these products has not yet been thoroughly ascertained, but the presence of acetone, Toluol, C₆H₅(CH₃), Dracyl of Glénard and Boudault (1844), and Styrol, C₈H₈ (Draconyl), has been pointed out, the latter perhaps due to the existence in the drug of metastyrol (p. 274), as suggested by Kovalewsky. Both these hydrocarbons are lighter than water; yet we find that the above oily portion yielded by dry distillation sinks in water, a circumstance possibly occasioned by the presence of benzoic alcohol, C₆H₅(CH₂OH).

As benzoic acid is freely soluble in petroleum ether it ought to be removed from the drug by that solvent: on making the experiment we got traces of an amorphous red matter, a little of an oily liquid, but nothing crystalline. Cinnamic acid, on the other hand, is always present, according to Hirschsohn (1877). As to the watery liquid, it assumes a blue colour on addition of perchloride of iron, whence it would appear to contain phenol or pyrogallol rather than pyrocatechin (p. 196).

By boiling dragon’s blood with nitric acid, benzoic, nitro-benzoic, and oxalic acids are chiefly obtained, and only very little picric acid. Hlasiwetz and Barth melted the drug with caustic potash, and found among the products thus formed phloroglucin (p. 243), para-oxybenzoic, protocatechuic, and oxalic acids, as well as several acids of the fatty series. Benzoin yields similar products.

Commerce—Dragon’s blood is shipped from Singapore and Batavia. Large quantities are annually exported from Banjarmasin in Borneo to these places and to China.

Uses—In medicine, only as the colouring agent of plasters and tooth powders; in the arts, for varnish.

Adulteration—Dragon’s blood varies exceedingly in quality, of which the principal criterion regarded by the dealers is colour. Some of the inferior sorts make only a dull brick-red mark when rubbed on paper, and have an earthy-looking fracture. The sticks moreover do not take the impression of the enveloping leaf as when they are more purely resinous. A sample of inferior Reed Dragon’s Blood afforded us 40 per cent. of matter, insoluble in spirit of wine.

Other sorts of Dragon’s Blood.

Dragon’s Blood of Socotra—We have already stated (p. 672) that the Cinnabar mentioned by Dioscorides was brought from Africa. That the term really designated dragon’s blood seems evident from the fact that the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written circa a.d. 54-68, names it (Κιννάβαρι) as a production of the island of Dioscorida, the ancient name of Socotra.

The Arabians, as Abu Hanifa and Ibn Baytar, describe dragon’s blood as brought from Socotra, giving to the drug the very name by which it is known to the Arabs at the present day, namely, Dam-ul-akh-wain. Barbosa (1514) as well as Giovanni di Barros mention it as a production of the island; and in our own times it has been noticed by Wellstead, Vaughan, and A. von Kremer. It is now but little collected. Vaughan states, as well as Von Wrede, that the tree is found in Hadramaut and on the east coast of Africa. The latter statement is also made in letters (1877, 1878), with which we were favoured by Captain Hunter of Aden and Hildebrandt of Berlin (see pages and ), by the latter of whom we were presented with a photographic sketch of the tree growing in the Somali country, at elevations of from 2500 to 5500 feet, and called there Moli. It is Dracæna schizantha Baker, a tree attaining 8 metres in height. The resin has an acidulous taste, and is, according to Hildebrandt, not exported, but occasionally eaten by the Somalis. The tree from which dragon’s blood is collected in Socotra is, according to Capt. Hunter, Dracæna Ombet Kotschy.

The Drop Dragon’s Blood, of which small parcels imported from Bombay or Zanzibar occasionally appear in the London market, is however this drug. It is in small tears and fragments, seldom exceeding an inch in length, has a clean glassy fracture, and in thin pieces is transparent and of a splendid ruby colour. From Sumatran dragon’s blood it may be distinguished by not containing the little shell-like scales constantly present in that drug, and by not evolving when heated on the point of a knife the irritating fumes of benzoic acid.

Dragon’s Blood of the Canary Islands—This substance is afforded by Dracæna Draco L., a liliaceous tree resembling a Yucca, of which the famous specimen at Orotava in Teneriffe has often been described on account of its gigantic dimensions and venerable age.

On the exploration of Madeira and Porto Santo in the 15th century, dragon’s blood was one of the valued productions collected by the voyagers, and is named as such by Alvise da ca da Mosto in 1454. It is also mentioned by the German physician Hieronymus Münzer, who visited Lisbon about 1494.

The tree yields the resin after incisions are made in its stem; but so far as we know the exudation has never formed a regular and ordinary article of commerce with Europe. It has been found in the sepulchral caves of the aboriginal inhabitants.

The name Dragon’s Blood has also been applied to an exudation obtained from the West Indian Pterocarpus Draco L., and to that of Croton Draco Schlecht.; but the latter appears to be of the nature of kino, and neither substance is met with in European commerce.

Aroideæ.

Rhizoma Calami Aromatici.

Radix Calami aromatici, Radix Acori; Sweet Flag Root; F. Acore odorant ou vrai, Roseau aromatique; G. Kalmus.

Botanical Origin—Acorus Calamus L., an aromatic, flag-like plant, growing on the margins of streams, swamps, and lakes, from the coasts of the Black Sea, through Southern Siberia, Central Asia, and India, as far as Amurland, Northern China, and Japan; indigenous also to North America. It is now established as a wild plant in the greater part of Europe, reaching from Sicily as far north as Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Russia; and is cultivated to a small extent in Burma and Ceylon.

Regarding the introduction of Acorus Calamus into Western Europe, it is believed in Poland to have been introduced there in the 13th century by the Tartars, yet it seems not to have attracted then any attention. The well-informed botanist, Bock (Tragus), mentioning the use of the preserved rhizome by wealthy persons, states that he had never seen the plant growing in Germany. Clusius relates that he first received a living plant in 1574, sent from the lake Apollonia near Brussa in Asia Minor. Camerarius, writing in 1588, speaks of it as introduced some years previously, and then plentiful in Germany, which seems to show a rapid propagation. Gerarde at the close of the century looked upon Acorus as an Eastern plant, which he says is grown in many English gardens, and might hence be fitly called the “Sweet Garden Flag.” Berlu, in 1724, observes of the root that—“it is brought in quantities from Germany:” hence we may infer that it was not then collected in England, as we know it was at a later period.

History—Sweet Flag root has been from the earliest times a favourite medicine of the natives of India, in which country it is sold in every bazaar. Ainslie asserts that it is reckoned so valuable in the bowel complaints of children that there is a penalty incurred by any druggist who will not open his door in the middle of the night to sell it, if demanded!

The descriptions of Acoron, a plant of Colchis, Galatia, Pontus, and Crete, given by Dioscorides and Pliny, certainly refer to this drug. We think that the Κάλαμος ἀρωματικός of Dioscorides, which he states to grow in India, is the same, though Royle regards it as an Andropogon. The Κάλαμος of Theophrastus and the Calamus of the English Bible are considered by some authors to refer to the Sweet Flag.

Celsus in the first century mentioned Calamus Alexandrinus, the drug being probably then brought from India by way of the Red Sea. We know by the testimony of Amatus Lusitanus that in the 16th century it used to be so imported into Venice. Rheede, moreover, described and figured Acorus Calamus as an Indian plant under the name Vacha, which it still bears on the Malabar Coast. But in the pharmaceutical tariff of the German town of Halberstadt of the year 1697, “Calamus aromaticus verus, Indianischer Calmus” and “Calamus aromaticus nostras,” common Calmus, are quoted at exactly the same price, and Murray states expressly that in his time (1790) Asiatic calamus was still met with in the pharmacies of Continental Europe, but that it had mostly been replaced by the home-grown drug. At the present time the Calamus aromaticus of commerce is European; in all essential characters it agrees with that of India, a package of which is now and then offered in the London drug sales.

Collection—The London market is supplied from Germany, whither the drug is brought, we believe, from Southern Russia. It is no longer collected in England,—at least in quantity, though it used to be gathered some years ago in Norfolk.

Description—The rootstock of sweet flag occurs in somewhat tortuous, subcylindrical or flattened pieces, a few inches long, and from ½ to 1 inch in greatest diameter. Each piece is obscurely marked on the upper surface with the scars, often hairy, of leaves, and on the under with a zigzag line of little, elevated, dot-like rings,—the scars of roots. The rootstock is usually rough and shrunken, varying in colour from dark brown to orange-brown, breaking easily with a short corky fracture, and exhibiting a pale brown spongy interior. The odour is aromatic and agreeable; the taste, bitterish and pungent.

The fresh rootstock is brownish-red or greenish, white or reddish within, and of a spongy texture. Its transverse section is tolerably uniform; a fine line (medullary sheath) separates the outer tissue from the lighter central part, the diameter of which is twice or three times the width of the former.

Microscopic Structure—The outermost layer is made up of extended epiblema-cells or of a brown corky tissue, the latter occurring in the parts free from leaf-scars. The prevailing tissue, both of the outer and the central part, consists of uniform nearly globular cells, traversed by numerous vascular bundles, especially at the boundary line (medullary sheath). Besides them, the rootstock like that of many fresh-water plants, exhibits a large number of intercellular holes. These air-holes, or more correctly water-holes, are somewhat longitudinally extended, so as to form a kind of network, imparting a spongy consistence to the fresh rootstock. At certain places, where the series of cells cross one another, especially in the outer part, there are single cells filled with essential oil, which may be made very conspicuous by adding to sections dilute potash or perchloride of iron. The other cells are loaded with small starch granules; a little mucilage and tannic matter is met with in the exterior coat.

Chemical Composition—The dried rhizome yielded us 1·3 per cent. of a yellowish neutral essential oil of agreeable odour, which in a column of 50 mm. long, deviates 13·8° to the right. By working on a large scale, Messrs. Schimmel & Co., Leipzig, obtain 2·4 to 2·6 per cent.

According to Kurbatow (1873), this oil contains a hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, boiling at 159° C., and forming a crystalline compound with HCl, and another hydrocarbon boiling at 255-258° C., affording no crystallizable hydrochloric compound. By submitting the oil to fractional distillation, we noticed, above 250°, a blue portion, which may be decolorized by sodium. The crude oil acquires a dark brownish colour on addition of perchloride of iron, but is not at all soluble in concentrated potash solution.

The bitter principle Acorin was extracted by Faust in 1867, as a semi-fluid, brownish glucoside, containing nitrogen, soluble both in ether and in alcohol, but neither in benzol nor in water. In order to obtain this substance, we precipitated the decoction of 10 lb. of the drug by means of tannic acid, and followed the method commonly practised in the preparation of bitter principles. By finally exhausting the residue with chloroform, we succeeded in obtaining a very bitter, perfectly crystalline body, but in so minute a quantity, that we were unable to investigate its nature.

Uses—Sweet Flag is an aromatic stimulant and tonic, now rarely used in regular medicine. It is sold by the herbalist for flavouring beer, and for masticating to clear the voice. It is said to be also used by snuff manufacturers.

Adulteration—The rhizome of the Yellow Flag, Iris Pseudacorus L., is occasionally mixed with that of the Sweet Flag, from which it may be distinguished by its want of aroma, astringent taste, dark colour, and dissimilar structure.

Liliaceæ.

Aloë.

Aloes; F. Aloès ou Suc d’Aloès; G. Aloë.

Botanical Origin—Several species of Aloë furnish a bitter juice which when inspissated forms this drug. These plants are natives of arid, sunny places in Southern and Eastern Africa, whence a few species have been introduced into Northern Africa, Spain, and the East and West Indies.

The aloes are succulent plants of liliaceous habit with persistent fleshy leaves, usually prickly at the margin, and erect spikes of yellow or red flowers. Many are stemless; others produce stems some feet in height, which are woody and branching. In the remote districts of Namaqua Land and Damara Land in Western South Africa, and in the Transkei Territory and Northern Natal to the eastern, aloes have been discovered which attain 30 to 60 feet in height, with stems as much as 12 feet in circumference. The following species may be named with more or less of certainty as yielding the drug.

Aloë socotrina Lam. (A. vera Miller), native of the southern shores of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, Socotra, and Zanzibar (?). It is the source of the Socotrine and Moka Aloes. A. officinalis Forsk. and A. rubescens DC. are considered to be varieties of this plant. A. abyssinica Lam. may probably contribute to the aloes shipped from the Red Sea.

A. vulgaris Lam. A. perfoliata, var. π. vera Linn., A. barbadensis Mill., a plant of India and of Eastern and Northern Africa, now found also on the shores of Southern Spain, Sicily, Greece, and the Canaries; introduced in the beginning of the 16th century (or earlier) into the West Indies. It affords Barbados and Curaçao Aloes. A. indica Royle, a plant of the North-west Provinces of India, common in Indian gardens, appears to be a slight variety of A. vulgaris Lam. A. litoralis König, said to grow in abundance at Cape Comorin, is unknown to us. Dr. Bidie suggests that it is a form of the preceding, stunted by a poor saline soil and exposure to the sea breeze. Both A. indica and A. litoralis are named in the Pharmacopœia of India.

Aloë ferox L., and hybrids obtained by crossing it with A. africana Mill. and A. spicata Thunberg, A. perfoliata Linn. (quoad Roxb.) and A. linguæformis are reputed to yield the best Cape Aloes.

A. africana Mill. and its varieties, and A. plicatilis Mill. afford an extract which Pappe says is thought to be less powerful.

A. arborescens Mill., A. Commelini Willd. and A. purpurascens Haworth are stated to produce a portion of the Cape Aloes of commerce.

Various species of Agave, especially A. americana L., are largely grown, since the first half of the 16th century, in the south of Europe, and popularly called Aloë. All of them are plants of Mexico, while the true aloes are natives of the old world. Botanically the genus Agave differs from Aloë, in that the former has the ovary inferior, while in the latter it is superior. From a chemical point of view there is also no analogy at all between Aloë and Agave.

History—Aloes was known to the Greeks as a production of the island of Socotra as early as the 4th century b.c., if we might credit a remarkable legend thus given in the writings of the Arabian geographer Edrisi. When Alexander had conquered the king of the Persians and his fleets had vanquished the islands of India, and he had killed Pour, king of the Indies, his master Aristotle recommended him to seek the island that produces Aloes. So when he had finished his conquests in India, he returned by way of the Indian Sea into that of Oman, conquered the isles therein, and arrived at last at Socotra, of which he admired the fertility and the climate. And from the advice which Aristotle gave him he determined to remove the original inhabitants and to put Greeks in their place, enjoining the latter to preserve carefully the plant yielding aloes, on account of its utility, and because that without it certain sovereign remedies could not be compounded. He thought also that the trade in and use of this noble drug would be a great advantage for all people. So he took away the original people of the island of Socotra, and established in their stead a colony of Ionians, who remained under his protection and that of his successors, and acquired great riches, until the period when the religion of the Messiah appeared, which religion they embraced. They then became Christians, and so their descendants have remained up to the present time (circa a.d. 1154).

This curious account, which Yule says is doubtless a fable, but invented to account for facts, is alluded to by the Mahomedan travellers of the 9th century and in the 10th by Masudi, who says that in his time aloes was produced only in the island of Socotra, where its manufacture had been improved by Greeks sent thither by Alexander the Great.

Aloes is not mentioned by Theophrastus, but appears to have been well known to Celsus, Dioscorides, Pliny and the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, as well as to the later Greek and the Arabian physicians. From the notices of it in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books and a reference to it as one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, we may infer that its use was not unknown in Britain as early as the 10th century.

At this period and for long afterwards the drug was imported into Europe by way of the Red Sea and Alexandria. After the discovery of a route to India by the Cape of Good Hope the old line of commerce probably began to change.

Pires, an apothecary at Cochin, in a letter on Eastern drugs addressed to Manuel, king of Portugal, in 1516, reports that aloes grows in the island of Çacotora, Aden, Cambaya, Valencia of Arragon, and in other parts,—the most esteemed being that of Çacotora, and next is that of Spain; while the drug of Aden and Cambaya is so bad as to be worthless.

In the early part of the 17th century there was a direct trade in aloes between England and Socotra; and in the records of the East India Company there are many notices of the drug being bought of the “King of Socotra.” Frequently the king’s whole stock of aloes is mentioned as having been purchased.

Wellstead, who travelled in Socotra in 1833, says that in old times the aloë was far more largely grown there than at present, and that the walls which enclosed the plantations may still be seen. He adds that the produce was a monopoly of the Sultan of the island. At the present day the few productions of Socotra that are exported are carried by the Arab coasting vessels, coming annually from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar, at which place they are transshipped for Indian and other ports. Dr. Kirk, who has resided at Zanzibar from 1866 to 1873, informs us that aloes from Socotra arrives in a very soft state packed in goatskins. From these it is transferred to wooden boxes, in which it concretes, and is shipped to Europe and America. To avoid loss the skins have to be washed; and the aloetic liquor evaporated.

Ligon, who visited the island of Barbados in 1647-50, that is about twenty years after the arrival of the first settlers, speaks of the aloë as if it were indigenous, mentioning also the useful plants which had been introduced. At that period the settlers knew how to prepare the juice for medicinal use, but had not begun to export it. Barbados aloes was in the drug warehouses of London in 1693.

The manufacture of aloes in the Cape Colony of South Africa was observed by Thunberg in 1773 on the farm of a boer named Peter de Wett, who was the first to prepare the drug in that country. Cape Aloes is enumerated in the stock of a London druggist in 1780, its cost being set down as £10 per cwt. (1s. 9½d. per lb.).

A new and distinct sort of aloes, manufactured in the colony of Natal, appeared in English commerce in 1870. It will be described further on.

Lignum Aloes—It is important to bear in mind that the word Aloes or Lign Aloës, in Latin Lignum Aloës, is used in the Bible and in many ancient writings to designate a substance totally distinct from the modern Aloes, namely the resinous wood of Aquilaria Agallocha Roxburgh, a large tree of the order Thymeleaceæ, growing in the Malayan Peninsula. Its wood constituted a drug which was, down to the beginning of the present century, generally valued for use as incense, but now esteemed only in the East.

Structure of the Leaf—The stout fleshy leaves of an aloë have a strong cuticle and thick-walled epidermis. Their interior substance is formed of very loose, large-celled, colourless pulp, traversed by vascular bundles, which, on transverse section, are seen to be accompanied by a group of large thin-walled cells containing the bitter juice which constitutes the drug under notice. These cells, on a longitudinal section, are seen to be considerably elongated, adjoining a single row of smaller, prismatic, truncated cells, by which the former are separated from the cortical layer. The prismatic cells contain a yellow juice, apparently different from that which yields aloes. The cortical tissue is filled with granules of chlorophyll, and exhibits between the cells groups of needles of calcium oxalate. Similar crystals are also found sparingly in the pulp.

The transparent pulp-tissue is rich in mucilage, which after dilution with water is precipitated by neutral acetate of lead, but is not coagulated by boiling.

The amount of bitter principles in the leaf probably varies with the age of the latter and with the season of the year. Haaxman mentions that, in Curaçao, the maximum is found when the leaves are changing from green to brown.

Cultivation and Manufacture—In Barbados, where Aloë vulgaris is systematically cultivated for the production of the drug, the plants are set 6 inches apart, in rows which are 1 to 1½ foot asunder, the ground having been carefully prepared and manured. They are kept free from grass and weeds, but yams or pulse are frequently grown between them. The plants are always dwarf, never in the least degree arborescent; almost all of those above a year old bear flowers, which being bright yellow, have a beautiful effect. The leaves are 1-2 feet long; they are cut annually, but this does not destroy the plant, which, under good cultivation, lasts for several years.

The cutting takes place in March and April, and is performed in the heat of the day. The leaves are cut off close to the plant, and placed very quickly, the cut end downwards, in a V-shaped wooden trough, about 4 feet long and 12 to 18 inches deep. This is set on a sharp incline, so that the juice which trickles from the leaves very rapidly flows down its sides, and finally escapes by a hole at its lower end into a vessel placed beneath. No pressure of any sort is applied to the leaves. It takes about a quarter of an hour to cut leaves enough to fill a trough. The troughs are so distributed as to be easily accessible to the cutters. Their number is generally five; and by the time the fifth is filled, the cutters return to the first and throw out the leaves, which they regard as exhausted. The leaves are neither infused nor boiled, nor is any use afterwards made of them except for manure.

When the vessels receiving the juice become filled, the latter is removed to a cask and reserved for evaporation. This may be done at once, or it may be delayed for weeks or even months, the juice, it is said, not fermenting or spoiling. The evaporation is generally conducted in a copper vessel; at the bottom of this is a large ladle, into which the impurities sink, and are from time to time removed as the boiling goes on. As soon as the inspissation has reached the proper point, which is determined solely by the experienced eye of the workman, the thickened juice is poured into large gourds or into boxes, and allowed to harden.

The drug is not always readily saleable in the island, but is usually bought up by speculators who keep it till there is a demand for it in England. The cultivators are small proprietors, but little capable as to mind or means of making experiments to improve the manufacture of the drug. It is said, however, that occasionally a little aloes of very superior kind is made for some special purpose by exposing the juice in a shallow vessel to solar heat till completely dry. But such a drug is stated to cost too much time and trouble to be profitable. The manufacture of aloes in the Dutch West Indian island of Curaçao is conducted in the same manner.

The manufacture of aloes in the Cape Colony has been thus described to us in a letter from Mr. Peter MacOwan of Gill College, Somerset East:—The operator scratches a shallow dish-shaped hollow in the dry ground, spreads therein a goatskin, and then proceeds to arrange around the margin a radial series of aloë leaves, the cut ends projecting inwards. Upon this, a second series is piled, and then a third—care being taken that the ends of each series overhang sufficiently, to drop clear into the central hollow. When these preparations have been made, the operator either “loafs about” after wild honey, or, more likely, lies down to sleep. The skin being nearly filled, four skewers run in and out at the edge square-fashion, give the means of lifting this primitive saucer from the ground, and emptying its contents into a cast-iron pot. The liquid is then boiled, an operation conducted with the utmost carelessness. Fresh juice is added to that which has nearly acquired the finished consistence; the fire is slackened or urged just as it happens, and the boiling is often interrupted for many hours, if neglect be more convenient than attention. In fact, the process is thoroughly barbarous, conducted without industry or reflection; it is mostly carried on by Bastaards and Hottentots, but not by Kaffirs. “The only aloë I have seen used,” says Mr. MacOwan, “is the very large one with di-or tri-chotomous inflorescence,—A. ferox, I believe.” Backhouse also names “Aloë ferox?” as the species he saw used near Port Elizabeth in 1838.

From another correspondent, we learn that the making of aloes in the Cape Colony is not carried on by preference, but is resorted to when more profitable work is scarce. The drug is sold by the farmers to the merchants of the towns on the coast, some of whom have exerted themselves to obtain a better commodity, and have even imported living aloe-plants from Barbados.

Nothing is known of the manufacture of the so-called Socotrine or Zanzibar Aloes, or even with certainty in what precise localities it is carried on.

General Description—The differences in the several kinds of commercial aloes are due to various causes, such as the species of Aloë employed and the method of extracting the juice. The drug varies exceedingly: some is perfectly transparent and amorphous, with a glassy conchoidal fracture; some is opaque and dark with a dull waxy fracture, or opaque and pallid; or it may be of a light orange-brown and highly crystalline. It varies in consistence in every degree, from dry and brittle to pasty, and even entirely fluid and syrup-like.

These diverse conditions are partially explained by an examination of the very fluid aloes that has been imported of recent years from Bombay. If some of this aloes is allowed to repose, it gradually separates into two portions,—the upper a transparent, black liquid,—the lower, an orange-brown crystalline sediment. If the whole be allowed to evaporate spontaneously, we get aloes of two sorts in the same mass; the one from the upper portion being dark, transparent and amorphous, the other rather opaque and highly crystalline. Should the two layers become mixed, an intermediate form of the drug results.

The Hepatic Aloes of the old writers was doubtless this rather opaque form of Socotrine Aloes; but the term has come to be used somewhat vaguely for any sort of liver-coloured aloes, and appears to us unworthy to be retained. Much of the opaque, so-called Hepatic Aloes does not however owe its opacity to crystals, but to a feculent matter the nature of which is doubtful.

The odour of aloes is a character which is much depended on by dealers for distinguishing the different varieties, but it can only be appreciated by experience, and certainly cannot be described.

Varieties—The principal varieties of aloes found in English commerce are the following:—

1. Socotrine Aloes—also called Bombay, East Indian, or Zanzibar Aloes, and when opaque and liver-coloured, Hepatic Aloes. It is imported in kegs and tin-lined boxes from Bombay, whither it has been carried by the Arab traders from the African coast, the Red Sea ports, or by way of Zanzibar, from Socotra. When of fine quality, it is of a dark reddish-brown, of a peculiar, rather agreeable odour, comparable to myrrh or saffron. In thin fragments, it is seen to be of an orange-brown; its powder is of a tawny reddish-brown. When moistened with spirit of wine, and examined in a thin stratum under the microscope, good Socotrine Aloes is seen to contain an abundance of crystals. As imported, it is usually soft, at least in the interior of the mass, but it speedily dries and hardens by keeping. It is occasionally imported in a completely fluid state (Liquid Socotrine Aloes, Aloë Juice), and is not unfrequently somewhat sour and deteriorated.

Some fine aloes from Zanzibar, of which a very small quantity was offered for sale in 1867, was contained in a skin, and composed of two layers, the one amorphous, the other a granular translucent substance of light colour, which when softened and examined with a lens, was seen to be a mass of crystals. A very bad, dark, fœtid sort of aloes is brought to Aden from the interior. It seems to be the Moka Aloes of some writers.

The quantity of aloes imported into Bombay in the year 1871-72 was 892 cwt., of which 736 cwt. are reported as shipped from the Red Sea ports and Aden.

2. Barbados Aloes—Characteristic samples show it as a hard dry substance of a deep chocolate-brown, with a clean, dull, waxy fracture. In small fragments it is seen to be translucent and of an orange-brown hue. When breathed upon, it exhales an odour analogous to, but easily distinguishable from, that of Socotrine aloes. It is imported in boxes and gourds. The gourds, into which the aloes has been poured in a melted state through a square hole, over which a bit of calico is afterwards nailed, contain from 10 to 40 lb. or more. Of late years, Barbados aloes having a smooth and glassy fracture has been imported; it is known to the London drug-brokers as “Capey Barbados.” By keeping, it passes into the usual variety having a dull fracture.

The export of aloes from Barbados in 1871, as shown by the Blue Book for that colony, was 1046 cwt., of which 954 cwt. were shipped to the United Kingdom.

3. Curaçao Aloes—manufactured in the Dutch West Indian islands of Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba, is imported into this country by way of Holland, packed in boxes of 15 to 28 lb. each. In appearance it resembles Barbados aloes, but has a distinctive odour.

4. Cape Aloes—The special features of this sort of aloes are its brilliant conchoidal fracture and peculiar odour. Small splinters seen by transmitted light are highly transparent and of an amber colour; the powder is of a pale tawny yellow. When the drug is moistened and examined under the microscope, no crystals can be detected, even after the lapse of some days. Cape aloes has the odour of other kinds of aloes, with a certain sourish smell which easily distinguishes it. Several qualities are recognized, chiefly by the greater or lesser brilliancy of fracture, and by the tint of the powder.

From the Blue Book for the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, published at Cape Town in 1873, it appears that the export of aloes in 1872 was 484,532 lb. (4326 cwt.); and that the average market value during the year was 3¾d., the lowest price, 1½d., being at Riversdale and Mossel Bay, and the highest, 11d., at Swellendam. The drug is shipped from Cape Town, Mossel Bay and Algoa Bay.

5. Natal Aloes—Aloes is also imported from Natal, and since 1870 in considerable quantity. Most of it is of an hepatic kind and completely unlike the ordinary Cape aloes, inasmuch as it is of a greyish-brown and very opaque. Moreover it contains a crystalline principle which has been found in no other sort of aloes.

The drug is manufactured in the upper districts of Natal, between Pietermaritzburg and the Quathlamba mountains, especially in the Umvoti and Mooi River Counties, at an elevation of 2000 to 4000 feet above the sea. The plant used is a large aloë which has not yet been botanically identified. The people who make the drug are British and Dutch settlers, employing Kaffir labourers. The process is not very different from that followed in making Cape aloes, but is conducted with more intelligence. The leaves are cut obliquely into slices, and allowed to exude their juice in the hot sunshine. The juice is then boiled down in iron pots, some care being taken to prevent burning, by stirring the liquid as it becomes thick. The drug while still hot, is poured into wooden cases, in which it is shipped to Europe. The exports from the colony have been as follows:—

1868 1869 1870 1871 1872

none 38 cwt. 646 cwt. 372 cwt. 501 cwt.

Chemical Composition—All kinds of aloes have an odour of the same character and a bitter disagreeable taste. The odour which is often not unpleasant, especially in Socotrine aloes, is due to a volatile oil, which the drug contains only in minute proportion. T. and H. Smith of Edinburgh, who contributed a specimen of it to the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, inform us that they obtained it by subjecting to distillation with water 400 lb. of aloes, which quantity they estimate to have yielded about an ounce. The oil is stated in a letter we have received from them, to be a mobile pale yellow liquid, of sp. gr. 0·863, with a boiling point of 266-271° C.

Pure aloes dissolves easily in spirit of wine with the exception of a few flocculi; it is insoluble in chloroform and bisulphide of carbon, as well as in the so-called petroleum ether, the most volatile portion of American petroleum. The sp. gr. of fine transparent fragments of aloes, dried at 100° C., and weighed in the last named fluid at 16° C., was found by one of us (F.) to be 1·364; showing that aloes is much more ponderous than most of the resins, which seldom have a higher sp. gr. than 1·00 to 1·10. In water aloes dissolves completely only when heated. On cooling, the aqueous solution, whether concentrated or dilute, becomes turbid by the separation of resinous drops, which unite into a brown mass,—the so-called Resin of Aloes. The clear solution, after separation of this substance, has a slightly acid reaction; it is coloured dark brown by alkalis, black by ferric chloride, and is precipitated yellowish-grey by neutral lead acetate. Cold water dissolves about half its weight of aloes, forming an acid liquid which exhibits similar reactions. The solution of aloes in potash or ammonia is precipitated by acids, but not by water.

The most interesting constituents of aloes are the substances known as Aloïn. This name was originally applied to an aloïn which, as it appears to be found exclusively in Barbados aloes, is now termed Barbaloïn, in order to distinguish it from allied substances occurring in Natal and Socotrine aloes.

Barbaloïn was discovered by T. and H. Smith of Edinburgh in 1851, and was described (1851) by Stenhouse. From good qualities of the drug it can be obtained, according to Tilden, as a crystalline mass, to the extent of 20 to 25 per cent., but in others it appears to occur partly amorphous or in a chemically altered state. Barbaloïn is a neutral substance, crystallizing in tufts of small yellow prisms. These crystals represent hydrated aloïn, and part with one molecule of water (=2·69 per cent.) by desiccation in vacuo, or by the prolonged heat of a water-bath. Barbaloïn, C₃₄H₃₆O₁₄ + H₂O, dissolves sparingly in water or alcohol but very freely if either liquid be even slightly warmed; it is insoluble in ether.

The solutions alter quickly if made a little alkaline, but if neutral or slightly acid, are by no means very prone to decomposition. By oxidation with nitric acid, barbaloïn yields, as Tilden (1872) has shown, about a third of its weight of chrysammic acid, besides aloëtic, oxalic, and picric acids. It easily combines with bromine to form yellow needles of Bromaloïn, C₃₄H₃₀Br₆O₁₄; Chloraloïn, C₃₄H₃₀Cl₆O₁₄ + 6H₂O, crystallizing in prisms, has likewise been obtained.

In examining Natal aloes in 1871, we observed it to contain a distinct crystalline body, much less soluble than the ordinary aloïn of Barbados aloes. We have accordingly named it Nataloïn.

Nataloïn exists naturally in Natal aloes, from which it can be easily prepared in the crude state, if the drug is triturated with an equal weight of alcohol at a temperature not exceeding 48° C. This will dissolve the amorphous portion, from which the crystals should be separated by a filter, and washed with a small quantity of cold spirit. From 16 to 25 per cent. of crude nataloïn in pale yellow crystals may be thus extracted. When purified by crystallization from methylic alcohol or spirit of wine, it forms thin, brittle, rectangular scales, often with one or more of their angles truncated. The formula assigned to nataloïn by Tilden, which is supported by the composition of the acetyl derivative he has succeeded in obtaining, is C₂₅H₂₈O₁₁.

At 15·5° C., 60 parts of alcohol, 35 of methylic alcohol, 50 of acetic ether, 1236 of ether, and 230 of absolute alcohol, dissolve respectively one part of nataloïn. It is scarcely more soluble in warm than in cold spirit of wine, so that to obtain crystals it is best to allow the solution to evaporate spontaneously. Water hot or cold dissolves it very sparingly. Nataloïn gives off no water when exposed over oil of vitriol, or to a temperature of 100° C. By the action of nitric acid, it affords both oxalic and picric acids, but no chrysammic acid. It appears not to combine with chlorine or bromine, and we have failed in obtaining from it any such body as bromaloïn.

Liquid Socotrine aloes, imported into London about 1852, was noticed by Pereira to abound in minute crystals, which he termed the Aloïn of Socotrine Aloes, and regarded as probably identical with that of Barbados aloes. Some fine dry aloes from Zanzibar of very pale hue, in our possession, is in reality a perfectly crystalline mass.

Histed was the first to assert that the crystalline matter of Socotrine or Zanzibar aloes is a peculiar substance, according neither with barbaloïn nor with nataloïn. This observation was fully corroborated by our own experiments, made chiefly on the Zanzibar aloes just described, and we shall call the substance thus discovered Socaloïn. In this drug, the crystals are prisms of comparatively large size, such as we have never observed in Natal aloes. They cannot be so easily isolated as nataloïn, since they are nearly as soluble as the amorphous matter surrounding them. Histed recommends treating the powdered crude drug with a little alcohol, sp. gr. 0·960, and strongly pressing the pasty mass between several thicknesses of calico; then dissolving the yellow crystalline cake in warm weak alcohol, and collecting the crystals which are formed by cooling and repose.

Socaloïn forms tufted acicular prisms, which by solution in methylic alcohol may be got 2 to 3 millimetres long. It is much more soluble than nataloïn. At ordinary temperatures, 30 parts of alcohol, 9 of acetic ether, 380 of ether, 90 of water are capable of dissolving respectively one part of socaloïn; while in methylic alcohol, it is most abundantly soluble. Socaloïn is a hydrate, losing when dried over oil of vitriol 11 to 12 per cent. of water, but slowly regaining it if afterwards exposed to the air. Its elementary composition according to the analysis made by one of us (F.) is C₃₄H₃₈O₁₅ + 5 H₂O. We have not succeeded in obtaining any well-defined bromine compound of socaloïn.

The three aloïns, Barbaloïn, Nataloïn, and Socaloïn, are easily distinguished by the following beautiful reaction first noticed by Histed:—a drop of nitric acid on a porcelain slab gives with a few particles of barbaloïn or nataloïn, a vivid crimson, but produces little effect with socaloïn. To distinguish barbaloïn from nataloïn, test each by adding a minute quantity to a drop or two of oil of vitriol, then allowing the vapour from a rod touched with nitric acid to pass over the surface. Barbaloïn (and socaloïn) will undergo no change, but nataloïn will assume a fine blue.

The researches of E. von Sommaruga and Egger in Vienna (1874) have been directed in particular to the aloïn of Socotrine aloes. The melting point of this aloïn was found to be between 118° and 120° C., that of barbaloïn being much higher. The authors conclude that the three form an homologous series, that their composition may probably be represented thus:—

Barbaloïn C₁₇H₂₀O₇

Nataloïn C₁₆H₁₈O₇

Socaloïn C₁₅H₁₆O₇

They derive in all probability from anthracene, C₁₄H₁₀.

The portion of aloes insoluble in cold water was formerly distinguished as Resin of Aloes, from the soluble portion which was called Bitter of aloes or Aloëtin. From the labours of Kossmann (1863), these portions appear to have nearly the same composition. The soluble portions treated with dilute sulphuric acid, is said to yield Aloëresic and Aloëretic Acids, both crystallizable, besides the indifferent substance Aloëretin. These observations have not to our knowledge been confirmed.

It has been shown by Tilden and Rammell that the Resin of Aloes may by prolonged treatment with boiling water be separated into two bodies, which they distinguish as Soluble Resin A. and Insoluble Resin B. With the first it is possible to form a brominated compound, which though non-crystalline is apparently of definite composition. In the view of these chemists the Resin A. is a kind of anhydride of barbaloïn—Barbaloïn, 2(C₃₄H₃₆O₁₄) less H₂O = Aloe Resin A., C₆₈H₇₀O₂₇. The resin boiled with nitric acid yields a large amount of chrysammic acid, together with picric and oxalic acids, and carbonic anhydride. Insoluble Resin B. was found to have nearly the same composition as Resin A.

Aloes treated with various reagents affords a number of remarkable products. Thus, according to Rochleder and Czumpelick (1861) it yields, when boiled with soda-lye, colourless crystals an inch long, which appear to consist of a salt of Paracumaric Acid, together with small quantities of fragrant essential oils and volatile fatty acids.

When boiled with dilute sulphuric acid, aloes yields paracumaric acid, from which by fusion with caustic potash, as also directly from aloes, Hlasiwetz (1865) obtained Para-oxybenzoic Acid (p. 408). Weselsky (1872-73) has shown that accompanying the last two products, there is a peculiar, crystallizable acid, C₉H₁₀O₃, which he has named Alorcinic Acid.

By distillation with quicklime, E. Robiquet (1846) obtained Aloïsol, a yellowish oil, which Rembold (1866) proved to be a mixture of dimethylated phenol (Xylenol)

C₇H₃ (CH₃)₂

OH

Nitric acid forms with Barbadoes aloes, but still better, as Tilden has shown, with barbaloïn, Aloëtic Acid, C₁₄H₄(NO₂)₄O₂, Chrysammic Acid, C₁₄H₄(NO₂)₄O₄, and finally Picric Acid, together with Oxalic Acid. The first two of these acids are distinguished by the splendid tints of their salts, which might be utilized in dyeing.

Chlorine, passed into an aqueous solution of aloes, forms a variety of substitution-products, and finally Chloranil, C₆Cl₄O₂.

When somewhat strongly heated, aloes swells up considerably, and after ignition leaves a light, slow-burning charcoal, almost free from inorganic constituents. Ordinary Cape aloes, for example, dried at 100° C., leaves only 1 per cent. of ash.

Commerce—There were imported into the United Kingdom in the year 1870, 6264 cwt. of aloes. Of this quantity, South Africa shipped 4811 cwt.; and Barbados 970 cwt. The remainder was probably furnished by Eastern Africa.

The commercial value of the varieties of aloes is very different. In 1874, Barbados Aloes was quoted in price-currents at £3 5s. to £9 10s. per cwt.; Socotrine at £5 to £13; while Cape Aloes was offered at £1 10s. to £2. In England, the first two alone are allowed for pharmaceutical preparations. Even the Veterinary Pharmacopœia names only Aloë Barbadensis. Cape Aloes is esteemed on the Continent, and chiefly consumed there.

Use—Aloes is a valuable purgative in very common use, it is generally given combined with other drugs.

Adulteration—The physical characters of aloes, such as colour of the powder, odour, consistence and freedom from obvious impurity, coupled with its solubility in weak alcohol, usually suffice for determining its goodness.

Bulbus Scillæ.

Radix Scillæ; Squill; F. Bulbe ou squames de Scille, Ognon marin; G. Meerzwiebel.

Botanical Origin—Urginea maritima Baker (Scilla maritima L., Urginea Scilla Steinheil). It is found generally in the regions bordering the Mediterranean, as in Southern France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, North Africa and the Mediterranean islands. In Sicily, where it grows most abundantly, Urginea ascends to elevations of 3000 feet. It is also very common throughout the South of Spain, where it is by no means confined to the coast; it occurs also in Portugal. In the Riviera of Genoa the peasants like to see it growing under the fig trees.

Two varieties of squill, termed respectively white and red, are distinguished by druggists. In the first, the bulb-scales are colourless; in the second they are of a roseate hue. No other difference in the plants can be pointed out, nor have the two varieties distinct areas of growth.

History—Squill is one of the most ancient of medicines. Epimenides, a Greek who lived in the 30th Olympiad, is said to have made much use of it, from which circumstance it came to be called Epimenidea. It is also mentioned by Theophrastus, and was probably well known to all the ancient Greek physicians. Pliny was not only acquainted with it, but had noticed its two varieties. Dioscorides describes the method of making vinegar of squills; and a similar preparation, as well as compounds of squill with honey, were administered by the Arabian physicians, and still remain in use. The medical school of Salerno preferred the red variety of the drug, which on the whole is not frequently met with in mediæval literature.

Description—The bulb of squill is pear-shaped, and of the size of a man’s fist or larger, often weighing more than four pounds. It has the usual structure of a tunicated bulb; its outer scales are reddish-brown, dry, scarious, and marked with parallel veins. The inner are fleshy and juicy, colourless or of a pale rose tint, thick towards the middle, very thin and delicate at the edges, smooth and shining on the surface. The fresh bulb has a mucilaginous, bitter, acrid taste, but not much odour.

For medicinal use, squill is mostly imported ready dried. The bulbs are collected in the month of August, at which period they are leafless, freed from their dry outer scales, cut transversely into thin slices, and dried in the sun. Thus prepared, the drug appears in the form of narrow, flattish or four-sided curved strips, 1 to 2 inches long, and ⅜ to ⅝ of an inch wide, flexible, translucent, of a pale dull yellowish colour, or when derived from the red variety, of a decided roseate hue. When thoroughly dried, they become brittle and pulverizable, but readily absorb water to the extent of about 11 per cent. Powdered squill by the absorption of water from the air, readily cakes together into a hard mass.

Microscopic Structure—The officinal portion of the plant being simply modified leaves, has the histological characters proper to many of those organs. The tissue is made up of polyhedral cells, covered on both sides of the scales by an epidermis provided with stomata. It is traversed by numerous vascular bundles, and also exhibits smaller bundles of laticiferous vessels. If thin slices of squill be moistened with dilute alcohol, most of the parenchymatous cells are seen to be loaded with mucilage, which contracts into a jelly on the addition of alcohol. In the interior of this jelly, crystalline particles are met with consisting of oxalate of calcium. This salt is largely deposited in cells, forming either bundles of needle-shaped crystals, or large solitary square prisms, frequently a millimetre long. In either case they are enveloped by the mucilaginous matter already mentioned. Oxalate of calcium as occurring in other plants has been shown in many instances to originate in the midst of mucilaginous matter. The fact is remarkably evident in Scilla, especially when examined in polarized light.

On shaking thin slices of the bulb with water, the crystals are deposited in sufficient quantity to become visible to the naked eye, though their weight is actually very small. Direct estimation of the oxalic acid (by titration with chamæleon solution) gave us only 3·07 per cent. of C₂CaO₄,3H₂O from white squill dried at 100° C., which moreover yielded only 2 to 5 per cent. of ash. It is these extremely sharp brittle crystals which occasion the itching and redness, and sometimes even vesication, which result from rubbing a slice of fresh squill on the skin. These effects, which have long been known, were attributed to a volatile acrid principle, until their true cause was recognized by Schroff.

The mucilage also contains albuminous matters, hence the orange colour it assumes on addition of iodine. The vascular bundles are accompanied by some rows of longitudinally extended cells, containing a small number of starch granules. In the red squill the colouring matter is contained in many of the parenchymatous cells, others being entirely devoid of it. It turns blackish-green if a persalt of iron be added.

Chemical Composition—The most abundant among the constituents of squill are mucilaginous and saccharine matters. Mucilage may be precipitated by means of neutral and basic acetate of lead, yet there remains in solution another substance of the same class, called Sinistrin. It was discovered in 1879 by Schmiedeberg, who obtained it by mixing the powder of squill, either red or white, with a solution of basic acetate of lead in slight excess. The gummy matters thus forming insoluble lead compounds being removed, the liquid is deprived of the lead and mixed with slaked lime. An insoluble compound of sinistrin and calcium separates and yields the former on decomposing the well washed precipitate with carbonic acid. The small amount of calcium remaining in the filtrate is to be removed by adding cautiously to the warm solution the small quantity just required of oxalic acid. Lastly, sinistrin is thrown down by alcohol. It is a white amorphous powder, on exposure to air soon forming transparent brittle lumps. The composition of sinistrin is that of dextrin = C₆H₁₀O₅, both these substances being very closely allied, yet the aqueous solution of sinistrin deviates the plane of polarization to the left. The rotatory power appears not to be much influenced by the concentration or the temperature of the solution of sinistrin.

An alkaline solution of tartrate of copper is not acted upon by sinistrin. It is transformed into sugar by boiling it for half an hour with water containing 1 per cent. of sulphuric acid. The sugar thus produced is stated by Schmiedeberg to consist of lævulose and another sugar, which in all probability, when perfectly pure, must prove devoid of rotatory power.

The name sinistrin has also been applied to a mucilaginous matter extracted from barley (see Hordeum decorticatum); it remains to be proved that the latter is identical with the sinistrin of squill.

We have obtained a considerable amount of an uncrystallizable levogyre sugar by exhausting squill with dilute alcohol. Alcohol added to an aqueous infusion of squill causes the separation of the mucilage, together with albuminoid matter. If the alcohol is evaporated and a solution of tannic acid is added, the latter will combine with the bitter principle of squill, which has not yet been isolated, although several chemists have devoted to it their investigations, and applied to it the names of Scillitin or Skuleïn. Schroff, to whom we are indebted for a valuable monograph on Squill, infers from his physiological experiments the presence of a non-volatile acrid principle (Skulein?), together with scillitin, which latter he supposes to be a glucoside.

Merck of Darmstadt has isolated Scillipicrin, soluble in water; Scillitoxin, likewise a bitter principle, insoluble in water, but readily dissolving in alcohol; and Scillin, a crystalline substance, abundantly soluble in boiling ether. The physiological action of these substances and of Scillaïn has been examined (1878) by Moeller, and by Jarmersted (1879); that of scillitoxin and scillaïn was found to be analogous to that of Digitalis.

Commerce—Dried squill, usually packed in casks, is imported into England from Malta.

Use—Commonly employed as a diuretic and expectorant.

Substitutes—There are several plants of which the bulbs are used in the place of the officinal squill, but which, owing to the abundance and low price of the latter, never appear in the European market.

1. Urginea altissima Baker (Ornithogalum altissimum L.), a South African species, very closely related to the common squill, and having, as it would appear, exactly the same properties.

2. U. indica Kth. (Scilla indica Roxb.), a widely diffused plant, occurring in Northern India, the Coromandel Coast, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Senegambia. It is known by the same Arabic and Persian names as U. maritima, and its bulb is used for similar purposes. But according to Moodeen Sheriff it is a poor substitute for the latter, having little or no action when it is old and large.

3. Scilla indica Baker (non Roxb.), (Ledebouria hyacinthina Roth), native of India and Abyssinia, has a bulb which is often confused in the Indian bazaars with the preceding, but is easily distinguishable when entire by being scaly (not tunicated); it is said to be a better representative of the European squill.

4. Drimia ciliaris Jacq., a plant of the Cape of Good Hope, of the order Liliaceæ. Its bulb much resembles the officinal squill, but has a juice so irritating if it comes in contact with the skin, that the plant is called by the colonists Jeukbol, i.e. Itch-bulb. It is used medicinally as an emetic, expectorant, and diuretic.

5. Crinum asiaticum var. toxicarium Herbert (C. toxicarium Roxb.), a large plant, with handsome white flowers and noble foliage, cultivated in Indian gardens, and also found wild in low humid spots in various parts of India and the Moluccas, and on the sea-coast of Ceylon. The bulb has been admitted to the Pharmacopœia of India (1868), chiefly on the recommendation of O’Shaughnessy, who considers it a valuable emetic. We have not been able to examine a specimen, and cannot learn that the drug has been the subject of any chemical investigation.

Melanthaceæ.

Rhizoma Veratri Albi.

Radix Veratri, Radix Hellebori albi; White Hellebore; F. Racine d’Ellébore blanc; G. Weisse Nieswurzel, Germer.

Botanical Origin—Veratrum album L.—This plant occurs in moist grassy places in the mountain regions of Middle and Southern Europe, as Auvergne, the Pyrenees, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria. In Norway it reaches, according to Schübeler (l. c. p. 556), the latitude of 71°. It also grows throughout European and Asiatic Russia as far as 61° N. lat., in Amurland, the island of Saghalin, Northern China, and Japan.

History—The confusion that existed among the ancients between Melampodium, Helleborus, and Veratrum, makes the identification of the plant under notice extremely unsatisfactory. It was perfectly described or figured by Brunfels, Tragus, and other botanists of the 16th century, and likewise well known to Gerarde (circa a.d. 1600). Under the names of Elleborus (or Helleborus albus) and Veratrum, it has had a place in all the London Pharmacopœias. In the British Pharmacopœia (1867) it has been replaced by the nearly allied American species, Veratrum viride Aiton.

Description—White Hellebore has a cylindrical, fleshy, perennial rootstock, 2 to 3 inches in length, and ¾ to 1 inch in diameter, beset with long stout roots. When fresh it has an alliaceous smell. In the dried state, as it occurs in commerce, it is cylindrical or subconical, of a dull earthy black, very rough in its lower half with the pits and scars of old roots; more or less beset above with the remains of recent roots. The top is crowned with the bases of the leaves, the outer of which are coarsely fibrous. The plant has generally been cut off close to the summit of the rhizome, which latter is seldom quite entire, being often broken at its lower end, or cut transversely to facilitate drying. Internally it is nearly colourless; a transverse section shows a broad white ring surrounding a spongy pale buff central portion.

The drug has a sweetish, bitterish acrid taste, leaving on the tongue a sensation of numbness and tingling. In the state of powder, it occasions violent sneezing.

Microscopic Structure—When cut transversely, the rhizome shows at a distance of 2-4 mm. from the thin dark outer bark, a fine brown zigzag line (medullary sheath) surrounding the central part, which exhibits a pith not well defined. The zone between the outer bark and the medullary sheath is pure white, with the exception of some isolated cells containing resin or colouring matter, and those places where the rootlets pass from the interior. The latter is sprinkled as it were, with short, thin somewhat lighter bundles of vessels which run irregularly out in all directions. The parenchyme of the centre rhizome is filled with starch, and contains numerous needles of calcium oxalate. The rootlets, which the collectors usually remove, are living and juicy only in the upper half of the rhizome, the lower part of which is rather woody and porous.

Chemical Composition—In 1819 Pelletier and Caventou detected in the rhizome of Veratrum a substance which they regarded as identical with veratrine, the existence of which had just been discovered by Meissner in cebadilla seeds. But according to the observations of Maisch (1870) and Dragendorff, the veratrine of cebadilla cannot be found either in Veratrum album or V. viride.

Simon (1837) found in the root the alkaloid Jervine, Tobien (1877) the Veratroïdine, discovered by Bullock (1876) in Veratrum viride. Tobien assigns to jervine the formula C₂₇H₄₇N₂O₈; that of veratroïdine is not yet settled. The latter is to some extent soluble in water.

Weppen (1872) has isolated from this drug Veratramarin, an amorphous, deliquescent, bitter principle. It occurs in minute quantity only, and is resolvable into sugar and other products. Veratramarin dissolves in water or spirit of wine, not in ether or in chloroform. The same observer has also isolated, to the extent of ½ per mille, Jervic Acid in hard crystals of considerable size, of the composition C₁₄H₁₀O₁₂ + 2 H₂O. The acid requires 100 parts of water for solution at the ordinary temperature, and a little less of boiling alcohol. It is decidedly acid, and forms well-defined crystallizable salts, containing 4 atoms of the monovalent metals.

By exhausting the entire rhizome (roots included) with ether and anhydrous alcohol, we obtained 25·8 per cent. of soft resin, which deserves further examination. Pectic matter to the amount of 10 per cent. was pointed out by Wiegand in 1841.

According to Schroff (1860), in the rootlets the active principle resides in the cortical part, the woody central portion being inert. He also asserts that the rhizome acts less strongly than the rootlets, and in a somewhat different manner.

Commerce—The drug is imported from Germany in bales. The price-currents distinguish Swiss and Austrian, and generally name the drug as “without fibre.”

Uses—Veratrum is an emetic and drastic purgative, rarely used internally. It is occasionally employed in the form of ointment in scabies. Its principal consumption is in veterinary medicine.

Substitutes—The rhizome of the Austrian Veratrum nigrum L. is said to be sometimes collected instead of White Hellebore; it is of much smaller size, and, according to Schroff, less potent. That of the Mexican Helonias frigida Lindley (Veratrum frigidum Schl.) appears to exactly resemble that of Veratrum album.

Rhizoma Veratri Viridis.

American White Hellebore, Indian Poke.

Botanical Origin—Veratrum viride Aiton, a plant in every respect closely resembling V. album, of which it is one of the numerous forms. In fact, the green-coloured variety of the latter (V. Lobelianum Bernh.), a plant not uncommon in the mountain meadows of the Alps, comes so near to the American V. viride that we are unable to point out any important character by which the two can be separated. The American Veratrum is common in swamps and low grounds from Canada to Georgia.

History—The aborigines of North America were acquainted with the active properties of this plant before their intercourse with Europeans, using it according to Josselyn, who visited the country in 1638-1671, as a vomit in a sort of ordeal. He calls it White Hellebore, and states that it is employed by the colonists as a purgative, antiscorbutic and insecticide.

Kalm (1749) states that the early settlers used a decoction of the roots to render their seed-maize poisonous to birds, which were made “delirious” by eating the grain, but not killed; and this custom was still practised in New England in 1835 (Osgood).

The effects of the drug have been repeatedly tried in the United States during the present century; and about 1862, in consequence of the strong recommendations of Drs. Osgood, Norwood, Cutter, and others, it began to be prescribed in this country.

Description—In form, internal structure, odour and taste, the rhizome and roots accord with those of Veratrum album; yet owing to the method of drying and preparing for the market, the American veratrum is immediately distinguishable from the White Hellebore of European commerce. We have met with it in three forms:—

1. The rhizome with roots attached, usually cut lengthwise into quarters, sometimes transversely also, densely beset with the pale brown roots, which towards their extremities are clothed with slender fibrous rootlets.

2. Rhizome and roots compressed into solid rectangular cakes, an inch in thickness.

3. The rhizome per se, sliced transversely and dried. It forms whitish, buff, or brownish discs, ½ to 1 inch or more in diameter, much shrunken and curled by drying. This is the form in which the drug is required by the United States Pharmacopœia.

Chemical Composition—No chemical difference between Veratrum viride and V. album has yet been ascertained. The presence of veratrine, suspected by previous chemists, was asserted by Worthington in 1839, J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia in 1857, and S. R. Percy in 1864. Scattergood obtained from the American drug 0·4 per cent. of this alkaloid, which however, in consequence of some observations of Dragendorff (p. 694), we must hold to be not identical with that of cebadilla. As stated in a previous page jervine and veratroïdine are present as in the White Hellebore of Europe. Robbins further isolated Veratridine, a crystallized alkaloid possessed of a similar physiological action to that of veratrine, though in a less degree. Veratridine is readily soluble in ether; its solution in concentrated sulphuric acid is at first yellow, changing quickly to a pink-red, and, after several hours’ standing, assumes a clear indigo-blue colour, much the same as that displayed by veratrine if mixed with sugar (Weppen’s test, 1874). The resin of the drug may be prepared by exhausting it with alcohol and precipitating with boiling acidulated water, repeating the process in order to entirely eliminate the alkaloids. It is a dark brown mass, yielding about a fourth of its weight to ether. Scattergood obtained it to the extent of 4½ per cent. By exhausting the drug successively with ether, absolute alcohol and spirit of wine, we extracted from it not less than 31 per cent. of a soft resinoid mass. Worthington pointed out the presence of gallic acid and of sugar.

Uses—Veratrum viride has of late been much recommended as a cardiac, arteral and nervous sedative. It is stated to lower the pulse, the respiration and beat of the body, not to be narcotic, and rarely to occasion purging; but to what principle these effects are due has not yet been ascertained. By some observers, as Bigelow, Fée, Schroff, and Oulmont, it is alleged to have the same medicinal powers as the European Veratrum album.

Semen Sabadillæ.

Fructus Sabadillæ; Cebadilla, Cevadilla; F. Cévadille; G. Sabadillsamen, Läusesamen.

Botanical Origin—Asagræa officinalis Lindley (Veratrum officinale Schlecht, Sabadilla officinarum Brandt, Schœnocaulon officinale A. Gray).—A bulbous plant, growing in Mexico, in grassy places on the eastern declivities of the volcanic range of the Cofre de Perote, and Orizaba, near Teosolo, Huatusco and Zacuapan, down to the sea-shore, also in Guatemala. Cebadilla is (or was) cultivated near Vera Cruz, Alvarado and Tlacatalpan in the Gulf of Mexico.

Another form of Asagræa, first noticed by Berg, but of late more particularly by Ernst of Caracas, who thinks it may constitute a distinct species, is found in plenty on grassy slopes, 3,500 to 4,000 feet above the sea-level, in the neighbourhood of Caracas, and southward in the hilly regions bordering the valley of the Tuy. It differs chiefly in having broader and more carinate leaves. Of late years it has furnished large quantities of seed, which, freed from their capsules, have been shipped from La Guaira to Hamburg.

History—Cebadilla was first described in 1517 by Monardes, who states that it is used by the Indians of New Spain as a caustic and corrosive application to wounds; but it does not seem to have been brought into European commerce, for neither Parkinson who described it in 1640 as the Indian Causticke Barley, nor Ray (1693) did more than copy from Monardes. It was regarded in Germany a rare drug even in 1726, but in the latter half of the last century it began to be recommended in France and Germany for the destruction of pediculi. A famous composition for this purpose was the Poudre des Capucins, consisting of a mixture of stavesacre, tobacco, and cebadilla, which was applied either dry or made into an ointment with lard. Cebadilla was also administered combined into a pill with gamboge and valerian, for the destruction of intestinal worms, but its virulent action made it hazardous.

Upon the introduction of veratrine into medicine about 1824 cebadilla attracted some notice, and was occasionally prescribed in the form of tincture and extract; but it subsequently fell into disuse, and is now only employed for the manufacture of veratrine.

Description—Each fruit consists of three oblong pointed follicles, about ½ an inch in length, surrounded below by the remains of the 6-partite calyx, and attached to a short pedicel. The follicles are united at the base, spread somewhat towards the apex, and open by their ventral suture. They are of a light brown colour and papery substance. Each usually contains two-pointed narrow black seeds, ³/₁₀ of an inch in length, which are shining, rugose, and angular or concave by mutual pressure. The compact testa encloses an oily albumen, at the base of which, opposite to the beaked apex, lies the small embryo. The seed is inodorous and has a bitter acrid taste; when powdered, it produces violent sneezing.

Microscopic Structure—A transverse section shows the horny concentrically radiated albumen, closely attached to the testa. The latter consists of an outer layer of cuboid cells, and three rows of smaller, thin-walled, tangentially-extended cells, all of which have brown walls. The tissue of the albumen is made up of large porous cells, containing drops of oil, granules of albuminoid matter, and mucilage. Traces of tannic acid occur only in the outer layers of the seed.

Chemical Composition—Meissner, an apothecary of Halle, Prussia, in 1819 discovered in cebadilla a basic substance, which he termed Sabadilline; in publishing, in 1821, the description of it the word “alkaloid” was introduced by Meissner at that occasion. The name Veratrine was applied likewise in 1819 by Pelletier and Caventou to a similar preparation. For many years this substance was known only as an amorphous powder, in which state it frequently contained a considerable proportion of resin; but in 1855 it was obtained by G. Merck in large rhombic prisms. Cebadilla yields only about 3 per mille of veratrine. The alkaloid is easily soluble in spirit of wine, ether or chloroform; these solutions, as well as the watery solutions of its salts, are devoid of rotatory power. Veratrine, like the drug from which it is derived, occasions, if inhaled, prolonged sternutation.

Again, in 1834, Conerbe described an alkaloid from cebadilla under the name of Sabadilline, and Weigelin (1871) another called Sabatrine.

From the investigations of Wright and Luff (1878) it appears that the above-mentioned statements must be resumed thus:—There are in cebadilla three alkaloids, namely Veratrine, C₃₇H₅₃NO₁₁, Cevadine, C₃₂H₄₉NO₉, and Cevadilline, C₃₄H₅₃NO₈, the second only being crystallizable.

Veratrin may be decomposed by means of caustic lye into a new alkaloid, verine, and dimethyl-protocatechuic acid,

C₆H₃ (OCH₃)₂

COOH

By the same treatment, cevadine yields an acid which appears to be identical with tiglinic acid (page 566), and an alkaloid called cevine.

Cebadilla yielded to Pelletier and Caventou a volatile fatty acid, Sabadillic or Cevadic Acid, the needle-shaped crystals of which fuse at 20° C. Lastly, E. Merck (1839) found a second peculiar acid termed Veratric Acid, affording quadrangular prisms, which can be sublimed without decomposition. It is yielded by cebadilla to the extent of but ⅙ per mille. It has been shown in 1876 by Körner to be identical with dimethyl-protocatechuic acid just mentioned (see also our article Tubera Aconiti, p. 9).

Commerce—The quantity of cebadilla (seeds only) shipped in 1876 from La Guaira, the port of Caracas, was 35,033 kilos., of which 25,966 went to Germany. No other sort is now imported.

Uses—Cebadilla is at present, we believe, only used as the source of veratrine. In Mexico, the bulb of the plant is employed as an anthelminthic, under the name of Cebolleja, but it is said to be very dangerous in its action.

Cormus Colchici.

Tuber vel Bulbus vel Radix Colchici; Meadow Saffron Root; F. Bulbe de Colchique; G. Zeitlosenknollen.

Botanical Origin—Colchicum autumnale L.—This plant grows in meadows and pastures over the greater part of Northern Africa, Middle and Southern Europe, and is plentiful in many localities in England and Ireland. In the Swiss Alps, it ascends to an elevation of 5500 feet above the sea-level.

History—Dioscorides drew attention to the poisonous properties of Κολχικὸν, which he stated to be a plant growing in Messenia and Colchis.

This character for deleterious qualities seems to have prevented the use of colchicum both in classical and mediæval times. Thus Tragus (1552) warns his readers against its use in gout, for which it is recommended in the writings of the Arabians. Jacques Grévin, a physician of Paris, author of Deux Livres des Venins, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth of England, and printed at Antwerp in 1568, observes—“ce poison est ennemy de la nature de l’homme en tout et par tout.” Dodoens calls it perniciosum Colchicum; and Lyte in his translation of this author (1578) says—“Medow or Wilde Saffron is corrupt and venomous, therefore not used in medicine.” Gerarde declares the roots of “Mede Saffron” to be “very hurtfull to the stomacke.”

Wedel published in 1718, at Jena, an essay De Colchico veneno et alexipharmaco, in which, to show the great disfavour in which this plant had been held, he remarks,—“hactenus ... velut infame habitum et damnatum fuit colchicum, indignum habitum inter herbas medicas vel officinales....” He further states that, in the 17th century, the corms were worn by the peasants in some parts of Germany as a charm against the plague.

In the face of these severe denunciations, it is strange to find that in the London Pharmacopœia of 1618 (the second edition), “Radix Colchici,” as well as Hermodactylus, is enumerated among the simple drugs; and again in the editions of 1627, 1632 and 1639. It is omitted in that of 1650, and does not reappear in subsequent editions until 1788, when owing to the investigations of Störck (1763), Kratochwill (1764), De Berge (1765), Ehrmann (1772), and others, the possibility of employing it usefully in medicine had been made evident.

Development of the Corm—At the period of flowering, the corm is surrounded with a brown, closed double membrane or tunic, which is prolonged upwards into a sheath around the flowering stem; at the base of the corm is a tuft of simple roots. On removing the membranes, we find a large, ovoid, fleshy body (Corm No. 1), marked at its apex by a depressed scar, the point of attachment of the flower-stem of the previous year; it is on one side flattened, and traversed by a shallow longitudinal furrow, from the upper part of which arises a much smaller and rudimentary corm (No. 2), bearing a flower-stem. After the production of the flower in the autumn, Corm No. 2 increases in size, throwing up as spring advances its fruit-stem and leaves, and acquires, after these latter have come to maturity, its full development. Corm No. 1 on the other hand, having performed its functions, shrivels and diminishes in size, in proportion as No. 2 advances to maturity, and ultimately decays, leaving a rounded cicatrix, showing its point of attachment to its successor.

Collection—In England the corms are usually dug up and brought to market in July, at the period between the decay of the foliage and the production of the flower, or even after the latter has appeared. For some preparations, they are used in the fresh state. If to be dried, it is customary to slice them across thinly and evenly with a knife, and to dry the slices quickly in a stove with a gentle heat; the membranes are afterwards removed by sifting or winnowing.

Schroff has stated, as the result of his experiments, that the corms possess the greatest medicinal activity when collected in the autumn during or after inflorescence; that they ought to be dried entire, by exposure to the sun and air; and that if thus preserved, they lose none of their strength, even if kept for several years.

Description—The fresh corm is conical or inversely pear-shaped, about 2 inches long by an inch or more wide, rounded on one side, flattish on the other, covered by a bright brown, membranous skin, within which is a second of paler colour. When cut transversely, it appears white, firm, fleshy and homogeneous, abounding in a bitter, starchy juice, of disagreeable odour. The dried slices are inodorous, and have a bitterish taste. They should be of a good white, clean, crisp and brittle,—not mouldy or stained.

Microscopic Structure—The outer membrane is formed of tangentially-extended cells, with thick brownish walls; the main body of the corm, of large thin-walled, more or less regularly globular cells, loaded with starch, and interrupted by vascular bundles containing spiral vessels. The original form of the starch granules is globular or egg-shaped, but from mutual pressure and agglutination, many are angular or truncated. A large proportion are more or less compound, consisting of several granules united into one. In all, the hilum is very distinct, appearing in some as a mere point, but in most as a line or star.

Chemical Composition—The corms contain Colchicin (see next article), starch, sugar, gum, resin, tannin, and fat. When sliced and dried, they lose about 70 per cent. of water. By drying, the (probably) volatile body upon which the odour of the fresh corm depends, is lost.

Uses—Colchicum is much prescribed in cases of gout, rheumatism, dropsy, and cutaneous maladies.

Other medicinal species of Colchicum.

Under the name Hermodactylus, the corms of other species of Colchicum of Eastern origin anciently enjoyed great reputation in medicine. These corms are in structure precisely like those of ordinary colchicum; they are entire, but deprived of membranous envelopes, of a flattened, heart-shaped form, not wrinkled on the surface, and often very small in size. The starch grains they contain are similar to those of C. autumnale, but in some specimens twice as large.

There is a great uncertainty as to the species of Colchicum which furnish hermodactyls. Prof. J. E. Planchon, who has written an elaborate article on the subject, is in favour of C. variegatum L., a native of the Levant. But one can hardly suppose this plant to be the source of the hermodactyls (Sūrinjān) of the Indian bazaars, which are stated to be brought from Kashmir.

Semen Colchici.

Colchicum Seed; F. Semence de Colchique; G. Zeitlosensamen.

Botanical Origin—Colchicum autumnale L., see page 699. The inflated capsule, which grows up in the spring after the disappearance of the flower in the autumn, is three-celled, dehiscent towards the apex by its ventral sutures, and contains, attached to the inner angle of the carpels, numerous globular seeds, which arrive at maturity in the latter part of the summer.

History—Colchicum seeds were introduced into medical practice by Dr. W. H. Williams, of Ipswich, about 1820, on the ground of their being more certain in action than the corm. They were admitted to the London Pharmacopœia in 1824.

Description—The seeds are of globose form, about ⅒ of an inch in diameter, somewhat pointed by a strophiole, which when dry is not very evident. They are rather rough and dull; when recent of a pale brown, but become darker by drying, and at the same time exude a sort of saccharine matter. They are inodorous even when fresh, but have a bitter acrid taste; they are very hard and difficult to powder.

Microscopic Structure—The reticulated, brown coat of the seed consists of a few rows of large, thin-walled tangentially-extended cells, considerably smaller towards the interior, the outermost containing starch grains in small number. The thin testa is closely adherent to the horny greyish albumen. The cells of the latter are remarkable for their thick walls, showing wide pores; they contain granular plasma and oil-drops. The very small leafless embryo may be observed on transverse section close beneath the testa on the side opposite the strophiole.