GRANA PARADISI…

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.[2420]

[2415] Figured in Pereira, Materia Medica ii. part i. (1855) 250, and already in Mattioli’s Commentar. in Dioscorid. lib. i. (1558) 27.

[2416] So named by Forskal in 1775 (Materia Medica Kahirina, 151. n. 41) who says “frequens in re culinariâ et medicâ, loco piperis.”

[2417] Letters on the commerce of Abyssinia, etc., addressed to the Foreign Office, 1852; 4. 16. 20.

[2418] Reise nach Abessinien, Jena, 1868. 223.

[2419] Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, 1863. 648.

[2420] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen’s Medical Plants, part 30 (1878).

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[2421] 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,[2422] physician at the court of the Emperor John III. at Nicœa, in the 13th century, prescribed Μνεγέται; and his contemporary, Simon of Genoa,[2423] at Rome, names the same drug as Melegete or Melegette. Grana Paradisi are enumerated among spices sold at Lyons[2424] in 1245, and were used about the same time by the Welsh Physicians of Myddvai under the name Grawn Paris.[2425] They also occur as Greyn Paradijs in a tariff of duties levied at Dordrecht in Holland[2426] 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.[2427]

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,[2428] 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.[2429] 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[2430] 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.

[2421] Rolandini Patavini Chronica—Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ historica; scriptores, xix. (1866) 45-46.—Yet qâfala, occurring in Edrisi, probably means grains of paradise.

[2422] De Compositione Medicamentorum; de antidotis, cap. xxii.

[2423] Clavis Sanationis, Venet. 1510. 19. 42.

[2424] Bibliothek d. lit. Vereins, Stuttgart, xvi. p. xxiii.

[2425] Meddygon Myddfai (see Appendix) 283. 286.

[2426] Sartorius and Lappenberg, Geschichte der Deutschen Hansa, ii. 448.

[2427] Doüet d’Arcq, 219, 266—see p. 533, note 2.

[2428] G. di Barros, Asia, Venet. 1561. 33 (65).

[2429] De componendorum miscendorumque medicamentorum ratione, libr. iv. Lugduni, 1556. 50.

[2430] Quoted at p. 589, note 4.

English voyagers visited the Gold Coast in the 16th century, bringing thence in exchanging for European goods, gold, ivory, pepper, and Grains of Paradise.[2431] 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.,”[2432] 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.[2433]

=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.[2434] 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.

[2431] Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, ii. pt. 2.—First Voiage of the Primerose and Lion to Guinea and Benin, A.D. 1553.

[2432] Remedia Guineensia, Upsaliæ, p. 71.

[2433] I have repeatedly raised Amomum Melegueta from commercial Grains of Paradise, and have cultivated the plant for some years, obtaining not only flowers, but large well-ripened fruits containing fertile seeds.—D. H.

[2434] This oil was obtained and tried in medicine in the beginning of the 17th century.—Porta, De Distillatione, Romæ, 1608, lib. iv. c. 4.

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[2435] 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.

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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.[2436]

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.

[2435] Blue Book for the Colony of the Gold Coast in 1871.

[2436] Tchihatcheff enumerates 36 species of Orchis as occurring in Asia Minor.—Asie Mineure, Bot. ii. 1860.

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.[2437]

=History=—Under the superstitious influence of the so-called doctrine of signatures,[2438] salep[2439] 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[2440] 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.[2441] The salep of India is produced on the hills of Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Kabul and Bokhara;[2442] the Neilgherry Hills in the south, and even Ceylon are said likewise to afford it.

[2437] The Indian species of Eulophia have been reviewed by Lindley in Journ. of Linn. Soc. Bot. iii. (1859) 23.

[2438] See Appendix, Porta.

[2439] Salep is the Arabic for fox, and the drug is called in that language Khus yatu’s salab, i.e. fox’s testicle; or Khus yatu’l kalb, i.e. dog’s testicle. The word Orchis, and the old English names Dogstones, Foxstones, Harestones and Goatstones have all been given in allusion to the form of the tubers.

[2440] Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences for 1740. 99.

[2441] Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, Athen, 1862. 9.

[2442] Powell, Economic Products of the Punjab, Roorkee, i. (1868) 261; Stewart, Punjab Plants, Lahore, 1869. 236.

=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.[2443]

[2443] As powdered salep is difficult to mix with water, many persons fail in preparing this decoction; but it may be easily managed by first stirring the salep with a little spirit of wine, then adding the water suddenly and boiling the mixture. The proportions are powdered salep 1 drachm, spirit 1½ fluid drachms, water ½ a pint.

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VANILLA

Vanilla;[2444] 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,[2445] 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.[2446] In the Thesaurus of Hernandez there is a figure and account of the plant under the name of Araco aromatico.[2447]

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,[2448] the director of the Botanical Garden of Liège, since which the production of the pods has been successfully carried on in all tropical countries[2449] 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,[2450] 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.

[2444] Diminutive of the Spanish vaina, a pod or capsule.

[2445] Beautifully figured in Berg and Schmidt’s Offizinelle Gewächse, xxxiii. tab. a and b (1862).

[2446] Exotica (1605) lib. iii. c. 18. 72.

[2447] Rerum Medicarum Novæ Hispaniæ Thesaurus, Romæ, 1651. p. 38.—The original drawing was one of a series of 1200, executed at great cost in Mexico by order of the King of Spain during the previous century.

[2448] Ann. of Nat. Hist. iii. (1839) 1.

[2449] In Réunion it was introduced in 1839 by Perrottet, the well-known botanist. See Delteil, Etude sur la Vanille, Paris, 1874. 54 pages, 2 plates.

[2450] De Vanielje, Leyden, 1856. 22, with figures.

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.[2451] 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[2452] 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.

[2451] This juice like that of the squill has an irritating effect on the skin, a fact of which the cultivators in Mauritius are well aware.

[2452] Vanilla grown in Europe is devoid of such cells. We can fully corroborate this statement (first made by Berg) from the examination of very aromatic pods produced in 1871 at Hillfield House, Reigate. We have even failed in finding those cells in any vanilla of recent importation (1878).

=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 are precipitated. {COOH

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.[2453] 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.[2454]

[2453] Culture du vanillier au Mexique, in the Revue Coloniale, ii. (1849) 383-390; also J. W. von Müller, Reisen in ... Mexico, ii. (Leipzig, 1864) 284-290.

[2454] Documents Statistiques réunis par l’Administration des Douanes sur le Commerce de la France, année 1872, p. 64.

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.

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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.[2455]

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.[2456] 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[2457] 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,[2458] seem to indicate that that city was famed for the growth of these plants. Petrus de Crescentiis[2459] 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[2460] laments that it was being displaced by the Florentine, though it might easily be obtained through the Venetians.

[2455] From observations made at Florence in the spring of 1872, I am led to regard the three species here named as quite distinct. The following comparative characters are perhaps worth recording:—

I. germanica—flower-stem scarcely 1½ times as tall as leaves; flowers more crowded than in I. pallida, varying in depth of colour but never pale blue.

I. pallida—bracts brown and scariose; flower-stem twice as high as leaves.

I. florentina—bracts green and fleshy; flower-stem short as in I. germanica; is a more tender plant than the other two, and blossoms a little later.—D. H.

[2456] For further information, consult Blümner, Die gewerbliche Thätigkeit der Völker des klassischen Alterthums, 1869. 57. 76. 83.

[2457] Flora Dalmatica, i. (1842) 116.

[2458] Dante, Divina commedia, cant. xvi.

[2459] De omnibus agriculturæ partibus, Basil. 1548. 219.

[2460] Dispensatorium, Norimb. 1529. 288.

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.[2461]

[2461] Groves, Pharm. Journ. iii. (1872) 229.—We have also to thank him for information communicated personally.

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.[2462] 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[2463] 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.[2464] 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.

[2462] The produce of some previous operations, in which 23 cwt. of orris was distilled, afforded but little over one-tenth per cent.

[2463] Pharm. Journ. vii. (1876) 130.

[2464] Consular Reports, 1876. 1416.

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CROCUS

Croci stigmata; Saffron[2465]; 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.

[2465] The word Saffron is derived from the Arabic Asfar, yellow.

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.[2466]

=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;[2467] 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.[2468] 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,[2469] 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.[2470]

There is evidence to show that saffron was a cultivated production of Spain[2471] 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.[2472] At that period, saffron was one of the productions of Cyprus,[2473] with which island France was then, through the princes of Lusignan, particularly related.

[2466] Chappellier has pointed out that Crocus sativus L. is unknown in a wild state, and that it hardly ever produces seed even though artificially fertilized; and has argued from these facts that it is probably a hybrid.—Bulletin de la Soc. bot. de France, xx. (1853) 191.

[2467] Canticles, ch. iv. 14.

[2468] Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, iii. (1857) 52.

[2469] Istachri, Buch der Länder, übersetzt von Mordtmann, 87. 93. 124. 126; Edrisi, Géographie, trad. par Jaubert, 168. 192.

[2470] Bretschneider, Chinese Botanical Works, Foochow, 1870. 15.

[2471] Le Calendrier de Cordoue de l’année 961, Leyde, 1873. 33. 109.

[2472] Conrad et Waldmann, Traité du Safran du Gâtinais, Paris, 1846. (23 pages;—no authority quoted).

[2473] De Mas Latrie, Hist. de l’ile de Chypre, iii. 498.

During the middle ages, the saffron cultivated at San Gemignano in Tuscany was an important article of exportation to Genoa.[2474] 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.[2475] 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.[2476] 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.[2477]

The saffron crocus is said to have been introduced into England during the reign of Edward III. (A.D. 1327-1377).[2478] 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.[2479] 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.[2480]

In the beginning of the last century (1723-28), the cultivation of saffron was carried on in what is described by a contemporary writer[2481] 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[2482] wrote in 1594, had ceased in 1768, and about Cambridge at nearly the same time.[2483] 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.[2484] The Pepperers of London about the same period were also held responsible to check dishonest tampering with saffron.[2485]

[2474] Bourquelot, Foires de la Champagne, Mém. de l’Acad. des inscript. et belles-lettres de l’Institut, v. (1865) 286.

[2475] Groves, Pharm. Journ. vi. (1875) 215.

[2476] Inzenga, in Annali d’ Agricoltura Siciliana, i. (1851) 51.

[2477] Tragus, De Stirpium, etc. 1552, p. 763; Ochs, Geschichte der Stadt und Landschaft Basel, iii. (1819) 189.

[2478] Morant, Hist. and Antiq. of Essex, ii. (1768) 545.

[2479] The other sorts are “Safren Calulome” and “Safren Noort.”—Archives générales du Pas de Calais, quoted by Dorvault, Revue pharmaceutique de 1858. p. 58.

[2480] Pharm. Journ. vi. (1876) 1023.

[2481] Douglass, Phil. Trans. Nov. 1728. 566.

[2482] Description of Essex, Camden Society, 1840. 8.

[2483] Morant, op. cit.; Lysons, Magna Britannia, vol. ii. pt. i. (1808) 36. Lysons records that at Fulbourn, a village near Cambridge, there had been no tithe of saffron since 1774.

[2484] Bonaini, Statuti inediti della città di Pisa dal xii. al xiv. secolo, iii. (1857) 101.

[2485] Riley, Memorials of London and London Life in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, 1868. 120.

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.[2486]

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.[2487] 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.[2488]

[2486] De la Mare, Traité de la Police, Paris, iii. (1719) 428.

[2487] J. F. Roth, Geschichte des Nürnbergischen Handels, 1800-1802, iv. 221.

[2488] Eight lots of saffron weighing in toto 61 lb., dried at various times during the course of nine years, lost 7 lb. 2¼ oz., i.e. 11·7 per cent.—(Laboratory records of Messrs. Allen & Hanburys, Plough Court, Lombard Street.)

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[2489] 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[2490] 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[2491] and again by Montagne in 1848.[2492]

[2489] Wiggers and Husemann, Jahresbericht for 1868. 35.

[2490] Bulletin de la Société impériale d’acclimatation, Avril, 1869.

[2491] Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, 1728. p. 100.

[2492] Etude micrographique de la maladie du Safran, connue sous le nom de tacon.

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.[2493]

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.[2494] 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.[2495] A very little of inferior quality is collected at Pampur in Kashmír, under heavy imposts of the Maharaja.[2496] 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.[2497] 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.[2498] 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.

[2493] Statistical Tables relating to Foreign Countries (Blue Book) 1870. 286. 289.

[2494] Dumesnil, l. c.

[2495] Bellew, From the Indus to the Tigris, Lond. 1874. 304.

[2496] Hügel, Kaschmir, ii. (1840) 274.—Powell, Punjab Products, i. (1868) 449.—Pharm. Journ. vi. (1875) 279.

[2497] Proc. of the American Pharm. Assoc. 1866. 254.

[2498] Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the Presidency of Bombay for 1872-73. pt. ii. 30.

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.[2499]

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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,[2500] 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,[2501] 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.

[2499] Science Papers, 368.

[2500] Bentley and Trimen, Medic. Plants, part 21 (1877).

[2501] On the study of Chinese botanical works, Foochow, 1870. 27.

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.[2502] 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.

[2502] J. J. Berlu, The Treasury of Drugs Unlocked, London, 1724, no doubt had before him the areca nuts in speaking of “Nuces indicæ (see also p. 503, note 2), like a nutmeg in shape, in chewing turns red; it is said they will make one drunk ... but I could never find it.”

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.[2503]

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.[2504] 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.

[2503] Ceylon Blue Books.

[2504] From the returns quoted at p. 571, note 5.

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.

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SANGUIS DRACONIS

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

=Botanical Origin=—Calamus Draco[2505] 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[2506] 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.[2507] 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.

[2505] Beautifully figured by Blume, Rumphia, ii. (1836) tab. 131-132.

[2506] Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Society), 1866. 30. 191-197.

[2507] Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, etc., 1871.

The first clear account of the production of the resin in India is that given by Rumphius, who in his Herbarium Amboinense[2508] 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.[2509]

[2508] Pars. v. (1747) 114-115. tab. 58.

[2509] Rumphia, iii. (1847) 9. tab. 131. 132.

=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[2510] 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,[2511] the latter perhaps due to the existence in the drug of metastyrol (p. 274), as suggested by Kovalewsky.[2512] 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.[2513]

=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,[2514] 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.

[2510] Phil. Trans. 1839. 134; 1840. 384.

[2511] Gmelin, Chemistry, xvii. (1866) 387.

[2512] Gmelin, Chemistry, xvii. 388; also Annalen der Chemie, cxx. (1861) 68.

[2513] Low, Sarawak, its inhabitants and productions, 1848. 43.

[2514] The present price, £3 to £11 per cwt., sufficiently indicates this.

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,[2515] 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,[2516] 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[2517] mention it as a production of the island; and in our own times it has been noticed by Wellstead,[2518] Vaughan,[2519] and A. von Kremer.[2520] 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 140 and 141), 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,[2521] 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[2522] 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.[2523]

[2515] Voyage of Nearchus and Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, translated by Vincent, Oxford, 1809. 90.

[2516] Sontheimer’s ed. i. 104. 426. ii. 117.

[2517] L’Asia, sec. deca. Venet. 1561. p. 10. a.

[2518] Travels in Arabia, Lond. 1838. ii. 449.

[2519] Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 385.

[2520] Aegypten, Leipzig, 1863.

[2521] On Hildebrandt’s East African Plants, Journ. of Bot. xv. (1877) 71.

[2522] Histological observations on the structure of the stem, accompanied by excellent figures, will be found in a memoir by Rauwenhoff (Bijdrage tot de kennis van Dracæna Draco, pp. 55. tabb. 5) in the Verhand. d. Kon. Acad. v. Wetensch., afd. Natuurk. x. 1863.

[2523] It was destroyed in 1867 by a hurricane.

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.[2524] It is also mentioned by the German physician Hieronymus Münzer, who visited Lisbon about 1494.[2525]

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.

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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[2526] that he had never seen the plant growing in Germany. Clusius[2527] relates that he first received a living plant in 1574, sent from the lake Apollonia near Brussa in Asia Minor. Camerarius,[2528] 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,[2529] 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.[2530]

[2524] Ramusio, Raccolta delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Venet. i. 97.

[2525] Kunstmann, Abhandlungen der Baierischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vii. (1855) 342. et seq.

[2526] Teutsche Speiskammer, Strassburg, 1550. ciiii.

[2527] Rariorum Stirpium Historia, Antv. 1576. 520.

[2528] Hortus medicus et philosophicus, Francof. 1588. 5.

[2529] Treasury of Drugs, ed. ii. 1724. 115.

[2530] See also Trimen in Journ. of Botany, ix. (1871) 163.

=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[2531] 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[2532] 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[2533] that in the 16th century it used to be so imported into Venice. Rheede,[2534] 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,[2535] and Murray[2536] 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.

[2531] Mat. Med. of Hindoostan, Madras, 1813. 54.

[2532] Exod. xxx. 23; Cant. iv. 14; Ezek. xxvii. 19.—See also page 715, footnote 2.

[2533] In Diosc. de Mat. Med. Enarrationes, Argent. 1554. 33.

[2534] Hortus Malabar, xi (1692) tab. 48. 49.

[2535] Flückiger, Documente (quoted page 562), 78.

[2536] Apparatus Medicaminum, v. 40.

=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[2537] 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,[2538] 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.

[2537] This was possibly alluded to by Albertus Magnus (A.D. 1193-1280), who says:—(Calamus aromaticus)—nascitur in India et Ethiopia sub cancro, et habet interius ex parte concava “pellem subtilem, sicut telæ sunt aranearum.”—De Vegetabilibus, Jessen’s ed. 1867. 376. We suppose the drug under notice was intended.

[2538] Hence the practice of peeling the rhizome which prevails in some parts of the Continent ought to be abandoned.

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LILIACEÆ

ALOË.

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

=Botanical Origin=—Several species of Aloë[2539] 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,[2540] 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.[2541] The following species may be named with more or less of certainty as yielding the drug.[2542]

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[2543] says is thought to be less powerful.

[2539] From the Syriac Alwai.

[2540] Aloë arborescens, A. purpurascens, and A. vulgaris may be seen luxuriantly growing in Valencia, Granada, Gibraltar.

[2541] Dyer in Gardeners’ Chronicle, May 2, 1874, with figures.

[2542] Good figures of Aloë africana, A. arborescens, A. ferox, A. purpurascens, A. socotrina, and A. vulgaris will be found in the work Monographia generis Aloës et Mesembryanthemi, auctore Jos. Principe de Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck, Bonnae, 1836-1863. fol.

[2543] Floræ Capensis Medicæ Prodromus, ed. 2, 1857. 41.

A. arborescens Mill., A. Commelini Willd. and A. purpurascens Haworth are stated to produce a portion of the Cape Aloes of commerce.[2544]

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.[2545] 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[2546] says is doubtless a fable, but invented to account for facts, is alluded to by the Mahomedan travellers of the 9th century[2547] and in the 10th by Masudi,[2548] 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[2549] 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.[2550]

[2544] In the above revision of the medicinal species of Aloë we have made free use of the observations on the same subject mentioned in the Dictionnaire de Botanique. We have also had the advantage of consulting W. Wilson Saunders, Esq., F.R.S., whose long familiarity with these plants in cultivation impart great weight to his opinion.

[2545] Géographie d’Edrisi, i. (1836) 47.

[2546] Marco Polo, ii. 343.

[2547] Anciennes Relations des Indes et de la Chine de deux Voyageurs Mahométans, qui y allèrent dans le neuvième siècle, traduites de l’Arabe, Paris, 1718. 113.

[2548] Tome iii. 36.—See Appendix.

[2549] Alexander Trallianus, in Puschmann’s edition (quoted in the Appendix), i. 578, speaks of Αλόης ὴπατίτιὸυς—Aloë hepatica.

[2550] See p. 439. note 1.

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[2551] 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.[2552]

Wellstead, who travelled in Socotra in 1833,[2553] 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,[2554] 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.[2555]

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.[2556] Cape Aloes is enumerated in the stock of a London druggist in 1780, its cost being set down as £10 per cwt. (1_s._ 9½_d._ 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[2557] of the order Thymeleaceæ, growing in the Malayan Peninsula. Its wood constituted a drug[2558] which was, down to the beginning of the present century, generally valued for use as incense, but now esteemed only in the East.

[2551] See Appendix.

[2552] Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Japan, 1513-1616, Lond. 1862.

[2553] Journ. of the Roy. Geograph. Soc. v. (1835) 129-229.

[2554] History of Barbadoes, Lond. 1673. 98.

[2555] Dale’s Pharmacologia (1693) 361.

[2556] Thunberg, Travels in Asia, Europe and Africa, ii. 49. 50.

[2557] Fig. in Royle, Illustr. of the Himalayan Bot. etc. (1839) tab. 36. See also Dictionnaire de Botanique.

[2558] Hanbury, Science Papers, 1876. 263; also Flückiger, Die Frankfurter Liste, Halle, 1873. 37. (Archiv der Pharm. cci. 511).—For full historical information see Heyd, Levantehandel, ii. (1879), 559.

=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[2559] 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,[2560] 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[2561] 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,[2562] 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.

[2559] The cells lettered e in Berg’s figure C, plate iv. f. of his “Offizinelle Gewächse.”

[2560] The cells d, in Berg’s figure.

[2561] This central pulpy tissue is quite tasteless, and is actually used as food in times of scarcity in some parts of India.—Stewart, Punjab Plants, 1869. 232.

[2562] For the particulars we here give respecting Barbados aloes, we have cordially to thank Sir R. Bowcher Clarke, Chief Justice of Barbados, and also Major-General Munro, stationed (1874) at Barbados in command of troops.

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.[2563] The manufacture of aloes in the Dutch West Indian island of Curaçao is conducted in the same manner.[2564]

The manufacture of aloes in the Cape Colony has been thus described to us in a letter[2565] 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[2566] also names “Aloë ferox?” as the species he saw used near Port Elizabeth in 1838.

[2563] Some extremely fine Barbados aloes in the London market in 1842 was said to have been manufactured in a vacuum-pan.

[2564] Oudemans, Handleiding tot de Pharmacognosie, 1865. 316.

[2565] Under date May 7, 1871, addressed to myself.—D. H.

[2566] Visit to Mauritius and South Africa, 1844. 157, also 121.

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[2567] 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.[2568]

[2567] As Macer Floridus in the 10th century, who writes:—

“Sunt Aloës species geminæ, quæ subrubet estque Intus sicut hepar cum frangitur, hæc epatite Dicitur et magnas habet in medicamine vires, Utilior piceo quæ fructa colore videtur.”

[2568] Thus the pale, liver-coloured aloes of Natal is invariably associated with the transparent Cape Aloes, simply from the fact that the two drugs have a similar smell. Again, the aloes of Curaçao is at once recognized by its odour, which an experienced druggist pronounces to be quite different from that of the aloes produced in Barbados.

=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.[2569] 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.[2570]

[2569] The average loss as estimated in the drying of 560 lb., upon several occasions, was about 14 per cent.—Laboratory statistics, communicated by Messrs. Allen and Hanburys, London.

[2570] Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the Presidency of Bombay for 1871-72, pt. ii. 19.

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 3¾_d._, the lowest price, 1½_d._, being at Riversdale and Mossel Bay, and the highest, 11_d._, 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.[2571] The exports from the colony have been as follows:—[2572]

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.[2573] 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.

[2571] We have to thank J. W. Akerman, Esq., of Pietermaritzburg, for the foregoing information as to the manufacture of this drug.

[2572] Blue Books for the Colony of Natal for 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872.

[2573] The average yield of aqueous extract made by the pharmacopœia process from commercial Socotrine aloes containing about 14 per cent. of water, was found from the record of five experiments, in which 179 lb. were used, to be 62·7 per cent. Barbados aloes, which is always much drier, afforded on an average 80 per cent.

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,[2574] and was described (1851) by Stenhouse. From good qualities of the drug it can be obtained, according to Tilden,[2575] 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,[2576] 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.

[2574] Most beautiful specimens have been presented to each of us by these gentlemen.

[2575] Pharm. Journ. April 28, 1872. 845.—See also Nov. 5, 1870. 375.

[2576] The best crystals can be got by this solvent.

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,[2577] 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,[2578] 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.[2579]

[2577] Flückiger, Crystalline Principles in Aloes,—Pharm. Journ. September 2, 1871. 195.

[2578] Rapidly fading in the case of barbaloïn, but permanent with nataloïn unless heat be applied.

[2579] These reactions may be sometimes got even with the crude drugs.

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[2580] 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.

[2580] Pharm. Journ. Sept. 21, 1872. 235.

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)

{(CH₃)₂ C₇H₃ {, with acetone and hydrocarbons. {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 5_s._ to £9 10_s._ per cwt.; Socotrine at £5 to £13; while Cape Aloes was offered at £1 10_s._ to £2. In England, the first two alone are allowed for pharmaceutical preparations. Even the Veterinary Pharmacopœia[2581] 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.

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BULBUS SCILLÆ

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

=Botanical Origin=—Urginea maritima Baker[2582] (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[2583]. 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.

[2581] By R. V. Tuson, London, 1869.

[2582] Journ. of Linn. Soc., Bot., xiii. (1872) 221.—The genus Urginea has flat, discoid seeds, while in Scilla proper they are triquetrous. The name Urginea was given in allusion to the Algerian tribe Ben Urgin, near Bona, where Steinheil (1834) examined this plant.

[2583] Haller, Bibliotheca botanica, i. 12.

=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.[2584]

[2584] We have found that the slimy juice of the leaves of Agapanthus umbellatus Hérit., which is very rich in spicular crystals, also occasions when rubbed on the skin both itching and redness, lasting for several hours.

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[2585] and another sugar, which in all probability, when perfectly pure, must prove devoid of rotatory power.

The name sinistrin[2586] 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.[2587] 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,[2588] 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.

[2585] This is the name applied to the lævogyrate uncrystallizable glucose produced, together with crystallizable dextro-glucose, by decomposing cane-sugar by means of dilute acids.

[2586] In 1834 first proposed, by Marquart, for inulin.

[2587] In Greece they have even attempted to manufacture alcohol by fermenting and distilling squill bulbs.—Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, 1862. 7.

[2588] Reprinted from the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft der Aerzte zu Wien, No. 42 (1864). Abstracted also in Canstatt’s Jahresbericht 1864. 19, and 1865. 238.

=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.[2589]

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[2590] it is a poor substitute for the latter, having little or no action when it is old and large.

3. Scilla indica Baker[2591] (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.[2592]

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.[2593]

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.

[2589] Pappe, Floræ Medicæ Capensis Prodromus, ed. 2, 1857. 41.

[2590] Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India, Madras, 1869. 250.

[2591] Saunders, Refugium Botanicum, iii. (1870) appendix, p. 12.

[2592] Suppl. to the Pharm. of India, 250.

[2593] Pappe, op. cit. 42.

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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.[2594] 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,[2595] the veratrine of cebadilla cannot be found either in Veratrum album or V. viride.

[2594] Those who wish to study the question, can consult Murray’s Apparatus Medicaminum. vol. v. (1790) 142-146.

[2595] Beitr. zur gerichtl. Chemie, St Petersb., 1872. 95.

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,[2596] 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,[2597] 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.[2598] The American Veratrum is common in swamps and low grounds from Canada to Georgia.

[2596] For good specimens of which I am indebted to Dr. Weppen.—F. A. F.

[2597] The name Green Hellebore is sometimes applied to this drug, but it properly belongs to Helleborus viridis L., which is medicinal in some parts of Europe.

[2598] Sims in contrasting Veratrum viride with V. album observes that the flowers of the former are “more inclined to a yellow green,” the petals broader and more erect, with the margins, especially about the claw, thickened and covered with a white mealiness. Bot. Mag. xxvii. (1808) tab. 1096.—Regel has described four varieties of Veratrum album L., as occurring in the region of the Lower Ussuri and Amurland, one of which, var. γ., he has identified with the American V. viride.—Tentamen Floræ Ussuriensis, St. Petersb. 1761. 153.

=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,[2599] 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[2600] 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[2601] in 1839, J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia in 1857, and S. R. Percy in 1864. Scattergood[2602] 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[2603] 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.

[2599] New England’s Rarities discovered, Lond. 1672. 43; also Account of two Voyages to New England, Lond., 1674, 60. 76.

[2600] Travels in North America, vol. ii. (1771) 91.

[2601] Am. Journ. of Pharm. iv. (1839) 89.

[2602] Proc. of Am. Pharm. Assoc. 1862. 226.

[2603] Ibid., 1877. 439. 523.

=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;[2604] but to what principle these effects are due has not yet been ascertained. By some observers, as Bigelow,[2605] Fée,[2606] Schroff,[2607] and Oulmont,[2608] it is alleged to have the same medicinal powers as the European Veratrum album.

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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,[2609] 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.[2610] It differs chiefly in having broader and more carinate leaves.[2611] Of late years it has furnished large quantities of seed, which, freed from their capsules, have been shipped from La Guaira to Hamburg.

[2604] Cutter, Lancet, Jan. 4, Aug. 16, 1862; Pharm. Journ. iv. (1863) 134.

[2605] American Medical Botany, ii. (1819) 121-136.

[2606] Cours d’Hist. Nat. Pharm. i. (1828) 319.

[2607] Medizinische Jahrbücher, xix. (Vienna, 1863) 129-148.

[2608] Buchner’s Repertorium für Pharmacie, xviii. (1868) 50; also Wiggers and Husemann’s Jahresbericht, xviii. 1868. 505.

[2609] Berg u. Schmidt, Offiz. Gewächse, i. (1858) tab. ix. e. “Sabadilla officinarum.”

[2610] Ernst, communication to the Linnean Society of London, 15 Dec., 1870.

[2611] Veratrum Sabadilla Retzius is stated by Lindley (Flora Medica, p. 586) to be a native of Mexico and the West Indian Islands, and to furnish a portion of the cebadilla seeds of commerce. The plant is unknown to us: we have searched for it in vain in the herbaria of Kew and the British Museum. It is not mentioned as West Indian by Grisebach (Flor. of Brit. W. I. Islands, 1864; Cat. Plant. Cubensium, 1866). The figure by Descourtilz (Flor. méd. des Antilles, iii. 1827. t. 1859) who had the plant growing at St. Domingo, shows it to resemble Veratrum album L., and therefore to be very different from Asagræa.

=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.[2612] Cebadilla was also administered combined into a pill with gamboge and valerian,[2613] 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[2614] 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.

[2612] Murray, Apparatus Medicaminum, v. (1790) 171; Mérat and De Lens, Dict. Mat. Méd. vi. (1834) 862.

[2613] Peyrilhe, Cours. d’Hist. Nat. Méd. ii. (1804) 490.

[2614] So called from Schlechtendal’s name for the plant, Veratrum officinale.

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,

{(OCH₃)₂ C₆H₃ { {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.

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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.[2615]

[2615] His description is exact, except that he declares the corm to have a sweet taste, which seems not true for Colchicum autumnale, but may be so for some other species.

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=[2616]—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,[2617] 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.

[2616] The term corm is applied by English writers to the short, fleshy, bulb-shaped base of an annual stem, either lateral as in Colchicum, or terminal as in Crocus. By many continental botanists, the corm of Colchicum is regarded either as a form of tuber, or of bulb.

[2617] Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für praktische Heilkunde, 1856, Nos. 22-24; also Wiggers, Jahresbericht der Pharm. 1856. 15.

=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.[2618] 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,[2619] 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,[2620] 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.

[2618] This is the average obtained during ten years in drying 16 cwt., in the laboratory of Messrs. Allen and Hanburys, London.

[2619] The Bitter Hermodactyl of Royle is not in our opinion the produce of a Colchicum at all; see also Cooke in Pharm. Journ. April 1, 1871.

[2620] Ann. des Sciences Nat., Bot., iv. (1855) 132; abstract in Pharm. Journ. xv. (1856) 465.

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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.[2621] 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.

=Chemical Composition=—The active principle of colchicum seed is termed Colchicin, but the chemists who have made it the subject of investigation are not agreed as to its properties. Thus Oberlin (1856) showed it to contain nitrogen, but without possessing basic properties. By treatment with acids, the amorphous colchicin yields a crystallizable body, Colchiceïn. Hübler (1864) prepared colchicin in the same way by which the so-called “bitter principles,” like dulcamarin (p. 451) are obtainable. He assigned to colchiceïn acid qualities and, strangely enough, the same formula he gave for colchicin itself, namely C₁₇H₁₉NO₅. Maisch[2622] as well as Diehl[2623] again obtained discrepant results. Colchicin of definite composition has not yet been isolated.

[2621] London Medical Repository, Aug. 1, 1820.

[2622] Pharm. Journ. ix. (1867) 249.

[2623] Proc. Americ. Pharm. Assoc. 1867. 363.

It would appear that in an aqueous or alcoholic extract of the seed an extremely small amount of an alkaloid is present, but that a basic substance is immediately formed on addition of mineral acids, or also oxalic acid. This suggestion is to some extent supported by the following facts:—

By adding the usual test solution for alkaloids, i.e. iodohydrogyrate of potassium (50 grammes of iodide of potassium, 13·5 of perchloride of mercury in one litre), to an aqueous solution of an alcoholic extract of the seeds, a very slight turbidity, or an insignificant precipitate is observed. Yet on addition of sulphuric, or nitric, or hydrochloric acid, an abundant precipitate of a beautiful yellow is at once produced. This experiment succeeds with a few seeds, either entire or powdered; it may be conveniently applied for the detection of colchicum in any preparation. We have ascertained that the yellow precipitate can be obtained also with the other parts of the plant. If the yellow compound is decomposed by sulphuretted hydrogen, the filtrate, after due concentration, now precipitates immediately on addition of the iodohydrogyrate, yet still more abundantly in presence of a mineral acid.

The seeds contain traces of gallic acid, much sugar and fatty oil. Of the last we obtained 6·6 per cent. by exhausting the dried seed with ether. The oil concreted at -8° C. Rosenwasser (1877) obtained 8·4 per cent. of the oil.

=Uses=—The same as those of the corm.

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SMILACEÆ

RADIX SARSAPARILLÆ.

Radix Sarzæ vel Sarsæ; Sarsaparilla; F. Racine de Salsepareille; G. Sarsaparillwurzel.

=Botanical Origin=—Sarsaparilla is afforded by several plants of the genus Smilax, indigenous to the northern half of South America, and the whole of Central America as far as the southern and western coast-lands of Mexico.

These plants are woody climbers, often ascending lofty trees by the strong tendrils which spring from the petiole of the leaf. Their stems are usually angular, armed with stout prickles, and thrown up from a large woody rhizome. The medicinal species inhabit swampy tropical forests, which are extremely deleterious to the health of Europeans, and can only be explored amid great difficulties. This circumstance taken in connexion with the facts that the plants are diœcious, that their scandent habit often renders their flowers and fruits (produced at different seasons) inaccessible, and that their leaves vary exceedingly in form,[2624] explains why we are but very imperfectly acquainted with the botanical sources of sarsaparilla.

[2624] The common Smilax aspera L., of Southern Europe, is a plant which presents such diversity of foliage, that if like its congeners of Tropical America, it were known only by a few leafy scraps preserved in herbaria, it would assuredly have been referred to several species.

It is not too much to assert that the sarsaparilla plant of no district in Tropical America is scientifically well known. The species moreover, to which the drug is assigned, have for the most part been founded upon characters that are totally insufficient, so that after an attentive study of herbarium specimens, we are obliged to regard as still doubtful several of the plants that have been named by previous writers.

Having made these preliminary remarks, we will enumerate the plants to which the sarsaparilla of commerce has been ascribed.

1. Smilax officinalis H.B.K.—This plant was obtained in the year 1805, by Humboldt, at Bajorque, a village since swept away by the stream, about in 7° N. lat., on the Magdalena in New Granada. The specimens, comprising only a few imperfect leaves, which we have examined in the National Herbarium of Paris, are the materials upon which Kunth founded the species. Humboldt[2625] states, that quantities of the root are shipped by way of Mompox and Cartagena to Jamaica and Cadiz.

In 1853 this plant was again gathered at Bajorque by the late De Warszewicz, who sent to one of us (H.) leaves and stems, accompanied by the root, which latter agrees with the Jamaica Sarsaparilla of commerce. But at Bajorque the root is no longer collected for exportation.

The same botanical collector, at the request of one of us, obtained in the year 1851, on the volcano and Cordillera of Chiriqui in Costa Rica, fruits, leaves, stems, and roots, of the plant there collected by the Indians as Sarsa peluda or Sarson. These specimens agree, so far as comparison is possible, with those of the Bajorque plant, while the root is undistinguishable from the Jamaica sarsaparilla of the shops. Other specimens of the same plant, gathered by the same collector in 1853, were forwarded to England with a living root, which latter however could not be made to grow.

Finally, in 1869, Mr. R. B. White obligingly communicated to us leaves and roots of a sarsaparilla collected at Patia in New Granada, which apparently belongs to the same species.

In the island of Jamaica, there has been cultivated for many years, and of late with a view to medicinal use, a sarsaparilla plant which appears to be Smilax officinalis. The specimens transmitted to us[2626] include neither flowers nor fruits; but the leaves and square stem accord exactly with those of the plant collected at Bajorque. The root is of a light cinnamon-brown, and far more amylaceous than the so-called Jamaica Sarsaparilla of commerce (see p. 710).

2. Smilax medica Schl. et Cham.—This species,[2627] which was discovered in Mexico by Schiede in 1820, is without doubt the source of the sarsaparilla shipped from Vera Cruz. According to our observations, it has a flexuose (or zigzag) stem, and much smaller foliage than S. officinalis; the leaves, though very variable, often assume an auriculate form, with broad, obtuse, basal lobes.

It grows on the eastern slopes of the Mexican Andes, and is the only species of that region of which the roots are collected. These, according to Schiede, are dug up all the year round, dried in the sun and made into bundles.

[2625] Kunth, Synopsis Plant. i. (1822) 278.—Smilax officinalis is a large, strong climber, attaining a height of 40 to 50 feet, with a perfectly square stem armed with prickles at the angles. The leaves are often a foot in length, of variable form, being triangular, ovate-oblong, or oblong-lanceolate, either gradually narrowing towards the apex or rounded and apiculate, and at the base either attenuated into the petiole, or truncate, or cordate. They are usually 5-nerved, the 3 inner nerves being prominent and enclosing an elliptic area. The flowers are in stalked umbels. A fine specimen of the plant is most luxuriantly growing since many years in the Royal Gardens, Kew, but has not flowered.

[2626] We owe them to the kindness of H. J. Kemble, Esq., who procured them, with specimens of the root, from the Government garden at Castleton.

[2627] Figured in Nees von Esenbeck’s Plantæ Medicinales, suppl. tab. 7.

Doubt and confusion hang over the other species of Smilax which have been quoted as the sources of sarsaparilla. S. syphilitica H.B.K., with flowers in a raceme of umbels, discovered on the Cassiquiare in New Granada, and well figured by Berg and Schmidt from an authentic specimen, appears from Pöppig’s statements to yield some of the sarsaparilla shipped at Pará. But Kunth states that Pöppig’s plant, gathered near Ega, is not that of Humboldt and Bonpland. Spruce, who collected S. syphilitica (herb. No. 3779) in descending the Rio Negro in 1854, has informed us that the Indians in various places in the Amazon valley always strenuously asserted it to be a species worthless for “Salsa.”

S. papyracea, described by Poiret[2628] in 1804, and figured by Martius,[2629] is but very imperfectly known. It has foliage resembling that of S. officinalis, but, judging from Spruce’s specimens (No. 1871) collected on the Rio Negro, a multangular stem. It is probably the source of the Pará Sarsaparilla.

S. cordato-ovata Rich. is a doubtful plant, perhaps identical with S. Schomburgkiana Knth., a Panama species. Pöppig alleges that its root is mixed with that of the plant which he calls S. syphilitica.

S. Purhampuy Ruiz, a Peruvian species, said to afford a valuable sort of sarsaparilla, is practically unknown, and is not admitted by Kunth.[2630]

No new information on the several above mentioned species of Smilax is found in the review of this genus by A. and C. De Candolle,[2631] where 105 American species are enumerated.

=History=—Monardes[2632] has recorded that sarsaparilla was first introduced to Seville about the year 1536 or 1545, from New Spain; and a better variety soon afterwards from Honduras. He further narrates that a drug of excellent quality was subsequently imported from the province of Quito, that it was collected in the neighbourhood of Guayaquil, and was of a dark hue, and larger and thicker than that of Honduras.

Pedro de Cieza de Leon, in his Chronicle of Peru,[2633] which contains the observations made by him in South America between 1532 and 1550, gives a particular account of the sarsaparilla which grows in the province of Guayaquil and the adjacent island of Puna, and recommends the sudorific treatment of syphilis, exactly as pursued at the present time.

These statements are confirmed by the testimony of other writers. Thus, João Rodriguez de Castello Branco, commonly known as Amatus Lusitanus, a Portuguese physician of Jewish origin, who practised chiefly in Italy, has left a work recording his medical experiences and narrating cases of successful treatment.[2634] One of the latter concerns a patient suffering from acute rheumatism, for whom he finally prescribed Sarsaparilla. This drug, he explains, has of late years been brought from the newly found country of Peru, that it is in long whip-like roots, growing from the stock of a sort of bramble resembling a vine, that the Spaniards call it Zarza parrilla, and that it is an excellent medicine.

[2628] Lamarck, Encyclopédie méthodique, Bot., vi. 1804. 468.

[2629] Flor. Bras. i. (1842-71) tab. 1.

[2630] It must not be supposed that all species of Smilax are capable of furnishing the drug. There are many, even South American, which like the S. aspera of Europe, have thin, wiry roots, which would never pass for medicinal sarsaparilla.

[2631] Monographiæ phanerogamarum, i. (1878) 6-199.

[2632] Pages 18 and 88 of the work quoted in the Appendix.

[2633] Parte primera de la Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 1553, folio lxix.—a translation for the Hakluyt Society in 1864, by Markham, who observes that Cieza de Leon never himself visited Guayaquil.

[2634] Curationum medicinalium centuriæ quatuor, Basileæ, 1556. 365.

About the same period, sarsaparilla was described by Auger Ferrier,[2635] a physician of Toulouse, who states that in the treatment of syphilis, which he calls Lues Hispanica, it is believed to be better than either China root or Lignum sanctum. Girolamo Cardano of Milan, in a little work called De radice Cina et Sarza Parilia judicium,[2636] expresses similar opinions. After so strong recommendations, the drug soon found its way to the pharmaceutical stores; we find it quoted for instance in 1563, in the tariff of the “Apotheke” of the little town of Annaberg in Saxony.[2637] We have also noticed “Sarsaparilla” in the Ricettario Fiorentino of the year 1573.[2638] Gerarde,[2639] who wrote about the close of the century, states that the sarsaparilla of Peru is imported into England in abundance.

=Collection of the Root=—Mr. Richard Spruce, the enterprising botanical explorer of the Amazon valley, has communicated to us the following particulars on this subject, which we give in his own graphic words:—

“When I was at Santarem on the Amazon in 1849-50, where considerable quantities of sarsaparilla are brought in from the upper regions of the river Tapajóz, and again when on the Upper Rio Negro and Uaupés in 1851-53, I often interrogated the traders about their criteria of the good kinds of sarsaparilla. Some of them had bought their stock of Indians of the forest, and had themselves no certain test of its genuineness or of its excellence, beyond the size of the roots, the thickest fetching the best price at Pará. Those who had gathered sarsaparilla for themselves were guided by the following characters:—1. Many stems from a root. 2. Prickles closely set. 3. Leaves thin.—The first character was (to them) alone essential, for in the species of Smilax that have solitary stems, or not more than two or three, the roots are so few as not to be worth grubbing up; whereas the multicaul species have numerous long roots,—three at least to each stem,—extending horizontally on all sides.

“In 1851, when I was at the falls of the Rio Negro, which are crossed by the equator, nine men started from the village of St. Gabriel to gather Salsa, as they called it, at the head of the river Cauaburís. During their absence I made the acquaintance of an old Indian, who told me that four years ago he had brought stools of Salsa from the Cauaburís and had planted them in a tabocál,—a clump of bamboos, indicating the site of an ancient Indian village,—on the other side of the falls, whither he invited me to go and witness the gathering of his first crop of roots. On the 23rd March, I visited the tabocál, and found some half-dozen plants of a Smilax with very prickly stems, but no flowers or fruit. At my request the Indian operated on the finest plant first. It had five stems from the crown, and numerous roots about 9 feet long, radiating horizontally on all sides. The thin covering of earth was first scraped away from the roots by hand, aided by a pointed stick; and had the salsa been the only plant occupying the ground, the task would have been easy. But the roots of the salsa were often difficult to trace among those of bamboo and other plants, which had to be cut through with a knife whenever they came in the way. The roots being at length all laid bare—(in this case it was the work of half a day, but with large plants it sometimes takes up a whole day or even more)—they were cut off near the crown, a few slender ones being allowed to remain, to aid the plant in renewing its growth. The stems also were shortened down to near the ground, and a little earth and dead leaves heaped over the crown, which would soon shoot out new stems.

[2635] De Pudendagra lue Hispanica, libri duo, first published at Toulouse in 1553, and many times reprinted. We have consulted the Antwerp edition of 1564, with which Cardano’s work is printed. The latter is said to have first appeared in 1559.

[2636] Basileæ, 1559, fol.

[2637] Flückiger, Documente (quoted at p. 404, note 7) 24.

[2638] See Appendix.

[2639] Herball, enlarged by Johnson, 1636. 859.

“The yield of this plant, of four years’ growth, was 16 lb.—half a Portuguese arroba—of roots; but a well grown plant will afford at the first cutting from one to two arrobas. In a couple of years, a plant may be cut again, but the yield will be much smaller and the roots more slender and less starchy.”

=General Description=—The medicinal species of Smilax have a thick, short, knotty rhizome, called by the druggists chump, from which grow in a horizontal direction long fleshy roots, from about the thickness of a quill to that of the little finger. These roots are mostly simple, forked only towards their extremities, beset with thread-like branching rootlets of nearly uniform size, which however are not emitted to any great extent from the more slender part of the root near the stock. When fresh the root is plump,[2640] but as found in commerce in the dried state it is more or less furrowed longitudinally, at least in the vicinity of the rhizome. When examined with a good lens both roots and rootlets may be seen in some specimens to be clothed with short velvety or shaggy hairs.

The presence or absence in greater or less abundance of starch in the bark of the root is regarded as an important criterion in estimating the good quality of sarsaparilla. In England the non-amylaceous or non-mealy roots are preferred, they alone being suitable for the manufacture of the dark fluid extract that is valued by the public. On the Continent, and especially in Italy, sarsaparilla, which when cut exhibits a thick bark, pure white within, is the esteemed kind.

The more or less plentiful occurrence of starch in the roots of Smilax is a character which has no botanical significance, and appears, indeed, to vary in the same species. If one examines Jamaica sarsaparilla by shaving off a little of the bark, one finds a large majority of roots to be non-amylaceous in their entire length; but others can be picked out which, though non-amylaceous for some distance from the rhizome, acquire a starchy bark, which is white internally in their middle and lower portions;—and there are still others which are slightly starchy even as they start from the parent rhizome, becoming still more as they advance. In Guatemala sarsaparilla, which is considered a very mealy sort, it is easy to perceive that the bark is hardly amylaceous in the vicinity of the rhizome, but that it acquires an enormous deposit of fecula as it proceeds in its growth.

[2640] We have been kindly permitted to examine the fresh root of the large plant of Smilax officinalis in the Royal Gardens, Kew; and have found that it agrees in appearance and in structure with Jamaica sarsaparilla.

Sarsaparilla varies greatly in the abundance of rootlets, technically called beard, with which the roots are clothed. This character depends partly on natural circumstances, and partly on the practice of the collectors who remove or retain the rootlets at will. Dr. Rhys of Belize has stated that the proportion of rootlets depends much on the nature of the soil, their development being most favoured by moist situations.

Dry sarsaparilla has not much smell, yet when large quantities are boiled, or when a decoction is evaporated, a peculiar and very perceptible odour is emitted. The taste of the root is earthy, and not well marked, and even a decoction has no very distinctive flavour.

=Microscopic Structure=[2641]—On a transverse section of the root, its fibro-vascular bundles are seen to be restricted to the central part, being all enclosed by a brown ring. Within this ring the bundles are densely packed so as to form a ligneous zone. The very centre of the section consists of white medullary tissue, through which sometimes a certain number of fibro-vascular bundles are scattered. A similar medullary parenchyme is met with between the brown ring or nucleus-sheath or the epidermis. On a longitudinal section the latter exhibits several rows of elongated cells, having their outer brown walls thickened by secondary deposits. The brown nucleus-sheath, on the other hand, consists of only one row of prismatic cells, their inner and lateral walls alone having secondary deposits. The vascular bundles contain large scalariform vessels and lignified prosenchymatous cells.

The parenchymatous cells, if not devoid of solid contents, are loaded with large compound starch granules; some cells also exhibit bundles of acicular crystals of calcium oxalate. In non-mealy sarsaparilla the vessels and ligneous cells sometimes contain a yellow resin.

The various sorts of sarsaparilla differ, not only in being mealy or non-mealy, but also as regards the thickness of the ligneous zone, which in some of them is many times thinner than the diameter of the central medullary tissue. In other kinds this diameter is very much smaller. Yet the nucleus-sheath affords still better means for distinguishing the sorts of this drug, if we examine its single cells in a transverse section. The outline of such a cell may be of a square or somewhat rounded shape, or it may be more or less extended. In this case it may be extended in the direction of a radius, or in the direction of a tangent. The secondary deposits may vary in thickness.

=Sorts of Sarsaparilla=—In the present state of our knowledge no botanical classification of the different kinds of sarsaparilla being possible, we shall resort to the arrangement adopted by Pereira and place them in two groups,—the mealy, or those of which starch is a prevalent constituent, and the non-mealy, or those in which starch exists to a comparatively small extent.

[2641] For more particulars consult Vandercolme, Histoire bot. et thérapeut. des Salsepareilles, Paris, 1870, 127 pp., 3 plates; and Otten, in Dragendorff’s Jahresbericht, 1876. 74.

(A.) Mealy Sarsaparillas.

1. Honduras Sarsaparilla—This drug is exported from Belize. It is made up in hanks or rolls about 30 inches long and 2½ to 4 inches or more in diameter, closely wound round with a long root so as to form a neat bundle. The hanks are united into bales by large pieces of hide, placed at top and bottom, and held together with thongs of the same, further strengthened with iron hoops.

The roots are deeply furrowed, or sometimes plump and smooth, more or less provided with beard or rootlets. In a very large proportion of their length they exhibit when cut a thick bark loaded with starch; yet in those parts which are near the rhizome the bark is brown, resinous, and non-amylaceous. They are of a pale brown, sometimes verging into orange. But the drug is subject to great variation, so that it is impossible to lay down absolutely distinctive characters.

The annual imports into the United Kingdom of sarsaparilla from British Honduras during the five years ending with 1870 averaged about 52,000 lb.

2. Guatemala Sarsaparilla—This sort of sarsaparilla, which first appeared in commerce about 1852, resembles the Honduras kind in many of its characters, and is packed in a similar manner. But it has a more decided orange hue; the roots as they start from the rhizome are lean, shrunken, and but little starchy, but they become gradually stouter (³/₁₀ inch diam.), and acquire a thick bark, which is internally very white and mealy. There is a tendency in the bark of this sarsaparilla to crack and split off, so that bare spaces showing the central woody column are not unfrequent.

According to Bentley,[2642] who examined specimens of the plant, this drug is derived from Smilax papyracea; we are not prepared to agree in this opinion.

3. Brazilian, Para or Lisbon Sarsaparilla—Though formerly held in high esteem Brazilian sarsaparilla is not now appreciated in England, and is rarely seen in the London market.[2643] It is packed in a very distinctive manner, the roots being tightly compressed into a cylindrical bundle, 3 feet or more in length and about 6 inches in diameter, firmly held together by the flexible stem of a bignoniaceous plant, closely wound round them, the ends being neatly shaved off.

[2642] Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 470, with figure.

[2643] We noticed 66 rolls of it from Pará, offered for sale 15 Dec. 1853.—D. H.

(B.) Non-mealy Sarsaparillas.

4. Jamaica Sarsaparilla—To the English druggist this is the most important variety; it is that which appears to have the greatest claim to possess some medicinal activity, and it is the only sort admitted to the British Pharmacopœia. Although constantly called Jamaica sarsaparilla, it is well known that it only bears the name of Jamaica through having been formerly shipped from Central America by way of that island.[2644] At the commencement of the last century, Jamaica was an emporium for sarsaparilla, great quantities of which, according to Sloane,[2645] were brought thither from Honduras, New Spain and Peru. Its actual place of growth, according to De Warszewicz (1851), is the mountain range known as the Cordillera of Chiriqui, in that part of the isthmus of Panama adjoining the republic of Costa Rica: here the plant grows at an elevation of 4000 to 8000 feet above the level of the sea. The root is brought by the natives to Boca del Toro on the Atlantic coast for shipment.

The drug consists of roots, 6 feet or more in length, bent repeatedly so as to form bundles of 18 inches long, and 4 in diameter, which are secured by being twined round (but less trimly and closely than the Honduras sort) with a long root of the same drug. The rhizome is entirely absent, but the fibre or beard is preserved, and is reckoned a valuable portion of the drug. The roots are deeply furrowed, shrunken, and generally more slender than in the Honduras kind; the bark when shaved off with a penknife is seen to be brown, hard and non-mealy throughout. Yet it is by no means uncommon to find roots which have a smooth bark rich in starch. In colour, Jamaica sarsaparilla varies from a pale earthy brown to a deeper more ferruginous hue, the latter tint being the most esteemed.

The sarsaparilla referred to at p. 704 as grown in the island of Jamaica, is a well prepared drug, yet so pale in colour and so amylaceous, that it finds but little favour in the English market. There were exported of it from Jamaica in 1870, 1747 lb.,[2646] in 1871, 1290 lb.

5. Mexican Sarsaparilla—The roots of this variety are not made into bundles, but are packed in straight lengths of about 3 feet into bales, the chump and portion of an angular (but not square) thorny stem being frequently retained. The roots are of a pale, dull brown, lean, shrivelled, and with but few fibres. When thick and large, they have a somewhat starchy bark, but when thin and near the rhizome, they are non-amylaceous.

6. Guayaquil Sarsaparilla—An esteemed kind of sarsaparilla has long been exported from Guayaquil (p. 705). Mr. Spruce has informed us that it is obtained in most of the valleys that debouch into the plain on the western side of the Equatorial Andes, but chiefly in the valley of Alausi, where, in 1859, he saw plants of it at the junction of the small river Puma-cocha with the Yaguachi. The plant appears to be very productive, an instance being on record of as much as 75 lb. of fresh roots having been obtained from a single stock.[2647]

[2644] The connexion between Jamaica and Central America dates back from the time of Charles II., during whose reign (1661-85), the king of the Mosquito Territory, a district never conquered by the Spaniards, applied to the governor of Jamaica for protection, which was accorded. The protectorate lasted until 1860, when Mosquitia was ceded to the government of Nicaragua.

[2645] Nat. Hist. of Jamaica, i. (1707), introduction, p. lxxxvi.

[2646] Blue Books—Island of Jamaica for 1870 and 1871.

[2647] Journ. of Linn. Soc., Bot., iv. (1860) 185.

Guayaquil sarsaparilla differs considerably from the sorts previously noticed. It is rudely packed in large bales, and is not generally made into separate hanks. The rhizome (chump) and a portion of the stem are often present, the latter being round and not prickly. The root is dark, large and coarse-looking, with a good deal of fibre. The bark is furrowed, rather thick, and not mealy in the slenderer portions of the root which is near the rootstock; but as the root becomes stout, so its bark becomes smoother, thicker and amylaceous, exhibiting when cut a fawn-coloured or pale yellow interior.

The quantity exported from Guayaquil in 1871 was 1017 quintals, value £3814.[2648]

=Chemical Composition=—Galileo Pallotta, at Naples, in 1824, first attempted to obtain from sarsaparilla a peculiar principle, which he believed to be an alkaloid, and termed Pariglina, or as now written Parillin. He exhausted the crude drug with boiling water and mixed the decoction with milk of lime, whereby a greyish precipitate was produced. This was dried, and treated with hot alcohol which extracted the parillin. Pallotta says the substance slightly reddens litmus, but does not explicitly state whether he got it in crystals or not. Berzelius in 1826 replaced the name pariglina by Smilacin. The same substance was obtained, more or less pure, by Thubeuf in 1831 and called Salseparin; Batka in 1833 termed it Parillinic acid. We have isolated parillin[2649] by exhausting Mexican sarsaparilla with boiling alcohol, 0·835 sp. gr., and evaporating the tincture to ⅙ of the weight of the root. By diluting 2 parts of the residue with 3 parts of cold water, a yellowish deposit of crude parillin is formed and may be separated after a few days by decantation. The deposit is then mixed with about half a volume of strong alcohol, now filtered and washed with dilute alcohol, about 0·965 sp. gr. It may further be purified by repeated recrystallization from dilute alcohol and the use of a little charcoal. The yield is about 0·19 per cent. of perfectly white crystallized parillin; a little more may be removed from the washings, but with much difficulty. These liquids and the mother-liquors may be concentrated and boiled with a little sulphuric acid in order to afford parigenin.

[2648] Vice-Consul Smith on the commerce of Ecuador—Consular Reports, presented to Parliament, July, 1872.

[2649] Yearbook of Pharm. 1878. 136.

Parillin forms brilliant scales, or can be obtained in thin prisms from boiling alcohol 0·965 sp. gr. Parillin is almost insoluble in cold water, but dissolves in 20 parts of boiling water. On cooling, the latter solution affords no crystals; an abundance of them are however produced on addition of alcohol. Parillin is also soluble in 25 parts of alcohol, 0·814 sp. gr., at 25° C., and much more abundantly in boiling alcohol, from which it partly separates in crystals on cooling. In both absolute alcohol or water, parillin is less soluble than in dilute alcohol. Hence aqueous solutions are precipitated by absolute alcohol, and parillin, on the other hand, separates from alcoholic solutions on addition of cold water. With chloroform, parillin yields a viscid solution which affords no crystals.

The alcoholic solutions of parillin have a somewhat acrid taste, and are devoid of rotatory power.

By dilute mineral acids, parillin is resolved into Parigenin and sugar; the liquid gradually acquires a dingy brown or greenish hue and fluorescence, which is most obvious if parillin dissolved in chloroform is decomposed by hydrochloric gas. Parigenin is easily isolated; it is insoluble even in boiling water, but crystallizes in white scales from alcohol.

The composition of parillin and parigenin is not settled; the former belongs to the class of saponin. Yet parillin differs from saponin as contained in Saponaria or Quillaja[2650] by not being sternutatory; its solutions froth when shaken.

The presence in sarsaparilla of starch, resin, and calcium oxalate, as revealed by the microscope, has been already pointed out. Pereira[2651] examined the essential oil, which is heavier than water and has the odour and taste of the drug; 140 lb. of Jamaica sarsaparilla afforded of it only a few drops.

The nature of the dark extractive matter which water removes from the root in abundance, and the proportion of which is considered by druggists a criterion of goodness, has not been studied.

=Commerce=—The importation of sarsaparilla into the United Kingdom in 1870 (later than which year we have no returns) amounted to 345,907 lb., valued at £26,564.

=Uses=—Sarsaparilla is regarded by many as a valuable alterative and tonic, but by others as possessing little if any remedial powers. It is still much employed, though by no means so extensively as a few years ago. The preparations most in use are those obtained by a prolonged boiling of the root in water.

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TUBER CHINÆ

Radix Chinæ; China Root; F. Squine; G. Chinawurzel.

=Botanical Origin=—Smilax China L., a woody, thorny, climbing shrub, is commonly said to afford this drug. The plant is a native of Japan, the Loochoo islands, Formosa, China, Cochin China, also of Eastern India, as Kasia, Assam, Sikkim, Nepal. The chief authority for attributing the China root to this plant is Kämpfer, who saw the latter in Japan and figured it.[2652]

S. glabra Roxb. and S. lanceæfolia Roxb., natives of India and Southern China, have tubers which, according to Roxburgh, cannot be distinguished from the China root of medicine, though the plants are perfectly distinct in appearance from S. China. Dr. Hance,[2653] of Whampoa, received a living specimen of China root, which proved to be that of S. glabra. The three above-named species all grow in the island of Hongkong.

[2650] See Christophson, in Dragendorff’s Jahresbericht, 1874. 155.

[2651] Elements of Mat. Med. ii. (1850) 1168.

[2652] “Sankira,” p. 783 in the first work quoted in the Appendix; another fig. will be found in Nees von Esenbeck’s Plantæ medicinales, Düsseldorf, 1828.

[2653] Trimen’s Journ. of Bot. i. (1872) 102.—S. glabra and S. lanceæfolia have been figured by Seemann in his Botany of the Herald, 1852-57, tabb. 99-100. S. China is well represented in the Kew Herbarium, where we have examined specimens from Nagasaki, Hakodadi, and Yokohama; from Loochoo, Corea, Formosa, Ningpo; and Indian ones from Khasia, Assam, and Nepal.

=History=—The use of this drug as a remedy for syphilis was made known to the Portuguese at Goa by Chinese traders about A.D. 1535. Garcia de Orta, who makes this statement, further narrates that so great was the reputation of the new drug, that the small quantities first brought to Malacca were sold at the rate of 10 crowns per ganta, a weight of 24 ounces.

Possibly the drug found its way to Europe even before that year, for we find a careful description of it in the posthumous works[2654] of Valerius Cordus and Walther Ryff[2655] states in 1548 that the root was brought a few years ago to Venice.

The reported good effects of China root on the Emperor Charles V. who was suffering from gout, acquired for the drug a great celebrity in Europe, and several works[2656] were written in praise of its virtues. But though its powers were soon found to have been greatly overrated, it still retained some reputation as a sudorific and alterative, and was much used at the end of the 17th century in the same way as sarsaparilla. It still retains a place in some modern pharmacopœias.

[2654] Edit. by Conrad Gesner, fol. 212 of the work quoted in the Appendix.

[2655] ... Bericht der Natur ... der Wurtzel China, Würzburg, 1548. 4°.

[2656] The earliest of which is by Andreas Vesalius, Epistola rationem, modumque pro pinandi radicis Chymae (sic!) decocti, quo nuper invictissimus Carolus V. imperator usus est, Venet., 1546.

=Description=—The plant produces stout fibrous roots, here and there thickened into large tubers, which when dried become the drug China root. These tubers, as found in the market, are of irregularly cylindrical form, usually a little flattened, sometimes producing short knobby branches. They are from about 4 to 6 or more inches in length, and 1 to 2 inches in thickness, covered with a rusty-coloured, rather shining bark, which in some specimens is smooth and in others more or less wrinkled. They have no distinct traces of rudimentary leaves, which however are perceptible on those of some allied species. Some still retain portions of the cord-like woody runners on which they grew; the bases of a few roots can also be observed. The tubers mostly show marks of having been trimmed with a knife.

China root is inodorous and almost insipid. A transverse section exhibits the interior as a dense granular substance of a pale fawn colour.

=Microscopic Structure=—The outermost cortical layer is made up of brown, thick-walled cells, tangentially-extended. They enclose numerous tufts of needle-shaped crystals of calcium oxalate, and reddish-brown masses of resin. The bark is at once succeeded by the inner parenchyme which contrasts strongly with it, consisting of large, thin-walled, porous cells which are completely gorged with starch, but here and there contain colouring matter and bundles of crystals. The starch granules are large (up to 50 mkm.), spherical, often flattened and angular from mutual pressure. Like those of colchicum, they exhibit a radiate hilum: very frequently they have burst and run together, probably in consequence of the tubers having been scalded. The vascular bundles scattered through the parenchyme, contain usually two large scalariform or reticulated vessels, a string of delicate thin-walled parenchyme, and elegant wood-cells with distinct incrusting layers and linear pores.

=Chemical Composition=—The drug is not known to contain any substance to which its supposed medicinal virtues can be referred. We have endeavoured to obtain from it Parillin, the crystalline principle of sarsaparilla, but without success.

=Commerce=—China root is imported into Europe from the South of China—usually from Canton. The quantity shipped from that port in 1872, was only 384 peculs (51,200 lb.); while the same year there was shipped from Hankow, the great trading city of the Yangtsze, no less than 10,258 peculs (1,367,733 lb.), all to Chinese ports. For the year 1874, these figures were: Hankow 9393 peculs, valued at 53,194 taels (one tael about 5_s._ 10_d._), Kewkiang 3627 peculs, Ningpo 2905 peculs,[2657] and for 1877 Hankow 12,075 peculs, Kewkiang 3942 peculs.

=Uses=—Notwithstanding the high opinion formerly entertained of the virtues of China root, it has in England fallen into complete disuse. In China and India it is still held in great esteem for the relief of rheumatic and syphilitic complaints, and as an aphrodisiac and demulcent. Polak asserts that the tubers of Smilax are consumed as food by Turcomans and Mongols.[2658]

=Substitutes=—Several American species of Smilax furnish a nearly allied drug, which at various times has been brought into commerce as Radix Chinæ occidentalis. It was already known to the authors of the 16th century; we met with it in 1872, and before, in the London market, as an importation from Puntas Arenas, the port of Costa Rica on the Pacific coast.

Of the exact species it is difficult to speak with certainty: but S. Pseudo-China L. and S. tamnoides L. growing in the United States from New Jersey southwards; S. Balbisiana Knth., a plant common in all the West Indian Islands; and S. Japicanga Griseb., S. syringoides Griseb. and S. Brasiliensis Spreng., are reputed to afford large tuberous rhizomes which in their several localities replace the China root of Asia, and are employed in a similar manner.[2659]

[2657] Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1872, pp. 34, 154, and the same for 1874.

[2658] See p. 324, note 2.—We quote this statement with reserve, knowing that both Chinese and Europeans sometimes confound China root with the singular fungoid production termed Pachyma Cocos. The first is called in Chinese Tu-fuh-ling,—the second Fuh-ling or Pe-fuh-ling.—See Hanbury, Pharm. Journ. iii. (1862) 421; and Science Papers, 202. 267.—F. Porter Smith, Mat. Med. and Nat. Hist. of China, 1871. 198; Dragendorff, Volksmedicin Turkestans in Buchner’s Repertorium, xxii. (1873) 135.

[2659] De Candolle’s monograph, quoted at p. 705, note 4, may be consulted on the above species.

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