FOLIA BUCHU…

FOLIA BUCHU

Folia Buceo; Buchu, Bucchu, Bucha or Buka Leaves; F. Feuilles de Bucco; G. Bukublätter.

=Botanical Origin=—The Buchu leaves are afforded by three species of Barosma.[427] The latter are erect shrubs some feet in height, with glabrous rod-like branches, opposite leaves furnished with conspicuous oil-cells on the toothed margin as well as generally on the under surface. The younger twigs and several parts of the flower are also provided with oil-cells. The white flowers with 5-partite calyx, and the fruit formed of five erect carpels, are often found, together with small leafy twigs, in the drug of commerce.

The leaves of the three species referred to may be thus distinguished:—

1. Barosma crenulata Hook. (B. crenata Kunze).—Oblong, oval, or obovate, obtuse, narrowed towards the base into a distinct petiole; margin serrulate or crenulate; dimensions, ¾ to 1½ inches long, ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch wide.

2. B. serratifolia Willd.—Linear-lanceolate, equally narrowed towards either end, three-nerved, apex truncate always furnished with an oil-cell; margin sharply serrulate; 1-1½ inches long by about ²/₁₀ of an inch wide.

3. B. betulina Bartling.—Cuneate-obovate, apex recurved; margin sharply denticulate, teeth spreading; ½ to ¾ of an inch long by ³/₁₀ to ⁵/₁₀ wide. Substance of the leaf more harsh and rigid than in the preceding.

B. crenulata and B. betulina grow in the Divisions of Clanwilliam and Worcester, north and north-east of Cape Town, and the former even on Table Mountain close to the capital; B. serratifolia is found in the Division of Swellendam farther south.

=History=—The use of Buchu leaves was learnt from the Hottentots by the colonists of the Cape of Good Hope. The first importations of the drug were consigned to the house of Reece & Co., of London, who introduced it to the medical profession in 1821.[428] The species appears to have been B. crenulata.

=Description=—In addition to the characters already pointed out, we may observe that buchu leaves of either of the kinds mentioned are smooth and glabrous, of a dull yellowish-green hue, somewhat paler on the under side, on which oil-cells in considerable number are perceptible.

[426] Am. Journ. of Pharm. 1874. 50; also Yearbook of Pharm. 1874. 91.

[427] From βαρὺς, heavy, and ὀσμὴ, odour.

[428] R. Reece, Monthly Gazette of Health for Feb. 1821. 799.

The leaves of B. crenulata vary in shape and size in different parcels, in some the leaves being larger and more elongated than in others, probably according to the luxuriance of the bushes in particular localities. Those of B. serratifolia and B. betulina present but little variation. Each kind is always imported by itself. Those of B. betulina are the least esteemed, and fetch a lower price than the others, yet appear to be quite as rich in essential oil.

Buchu leaves have a penetrating peculiar odour and a strongly aromatic taste.

=Microscopic Structure=—The essential oil is contained in large cells close beneath the epidermis of the under side of the leaf. The oil-cells are circular and surrounded by a thin layer of smaller cells; they consequently partake of the character of the oil-ducts in the aromatic roots of Umbelliferæ and Compositæ. The latter, however, are elongated.

The upper side of the leaf of Barosma exhibits an extremely interesting peculiarity[429]. There is a colourless layer of cells separating the epidermis from the green inner tissue (mesophyllum). If the leaves are examined under alcohol or almond oil the colourless layer is seen to be very narrow, and the thin walls of its cells shrunken and not clearly distinguishable. If the transverse sections are examined under water, these cells immediately swell up, and become strongly distended, giving off an abundance of mucilage, the latter being afforded by the solution of the very cell-walls. The mucilage of buchu leaves thus originates in the same way as in flax seed or quince seed, but in the former the epidermis is thrown off without alteration. We are not aware that other mucilaginous leaves possess a similar structure, at least not those of Althæa officinalis and of Sesamum which we examined[430].

=Chemical Composition=—The leaves of B. betulina afforded us by distillation 1·56 per cent, of volatile oil[431], which has the odour rather of peppermint than of buchu, and deviates the ray of polarized light considerably to the left. On exposure to cold it furnishes a camphor which, after re-solution in spirit of wine, crystallizes in needle-shaped forms. After repeated purification in this manner, the crystals of Barosma Camphor have an almost pure peppermint odour; they fuse at 85° C., and begin to sublime at 110° C. After fusion they again solidify only at 50° C. Submitted to elementary analysis, the crystals yielded us 74·08 per cent. of carbon and from 9 to 10 per cent. of hydrogen[432]. Barosma camphor is abundantly soluble in bisulphide of carbon.

The crude oil from which the camphor has been separated has a boiling point of about 200° C., quickly rising to 210° or even higher. That which distilled between these temperatures was treated with sodium, rectified in a current of common coal gas and submitted to elementary analysis, afforded us 77·86 per cent, of carbon and 10·58 of hydrogen. The formula C₁₀H₁₆O would require 78·94 of carbon and 10·53 of hydrogen.

Wayne’s experiments[433] appear to indicate that the oil also contains a substance capable of being converted into salicylic acid. An aqueous infusion of buchu leaves turns beautifully yellow if it is mixed with alkali.

[429] Flückiger in Schweiz. Wochenschrift für Pharm. Dec. 1873, with plate.

[430] See also Radlkofer, Monographie der Sapindaceen-Gattung Serjania, München, 1875, p. 100-105.

[431] Messrs. Allen and Hanburys operating on larger quantities obtained 1.63 per cent.—Barosma serratifolia appears to be less rich, according to Bedford (1863).

[432] Our supply of the substance having been exhausted by two analyses we cannot regard the above figures as sufficient for the calculation of a formula.

[433] Am. Journ. of Pharm. 1876. 19.

On addition of perchloride of iron the infusion assumes a dingy brownish-green colour changing to red by an alkali. The infusion added to a concentrated solution of acetate of copper causes a yellow precipitate[434] which dissolves in caustic potash, affording a green solution. This may be due to the presence of a substance of the quercitrin or rutin class.

When the leaves are infused in warm water, the mucilage noticed under the microscope may easily be pressed out. It requires for precipitation a large amount of alcohol, being readily miscible with dilute alcohol. Neutral acetate of lead produces a yellow precipitate in an infusion of the leaves; the liquid affords a precipitate by a subsequent addition of basic acetate of lead. The latter precipitate is (probably) due to the mucilage, that afforded by neutral acetate partly to mucilage and partly, we suppose, to rutin or an allied substance. Yet the mucilage of buchu leaves is of the class which is not properly dissolved by water, but only swells up like tragacanth.

The leaves of B. crenulata afforded us upon incineration 4·7 per cent. of ash. Jones (1879) obtained on an average 4·54 per cent. from the same species; 5·27 from B. serratifolia; and 4·49 from B. betulina. He pointed out the presence of manganate in this ash.

The Diosmin of Landerer[435] is entirely unknown to us.

=Commerce=—The export of buchu from the Cape Colony in 1872 was 379,125 lb., about one-sixth of which quantity was shipped direct to the United States.[436]

=Uses=—Buchu is principally administered in disorders of the urino-genital organs. It is reputed diuretic and diaphoretic. In the Cape Colony the leaves are much employed as a popular stimulant and stomachic, infused in water, sherry, or brandy. They are also extensively used in the United States, both in regular medicine and by the vendors of secret remedies.

=Substitutes=—The leaves of Empleurum serrulatum Ait., a small shrub of the same order as Barosma and growing in the same localities, have been imported rather frequently of late and sold as Buchu. They have the same structure as regards mucilage, and nearly the same form as those of B. serratifolia, but are easily distinguished. They are still narrower, and often longer than those of B. serratifolia, devoid of lateral veins, and terminate in an acute point without an oil-duct. They have a bitterish taste and a less powerful odour than those of Barosma, even in fresh leaves as imported in London. The odour of Empleurum is moreover distinctly different from that of the leaves of Barosma. The flowers of Empleurum are still more distinct, for they are apetalous and reddish-brown. The fruit consisting of a single, compressed, oblong carpel, terminated by a flat-shaped horn, is quite unlike that of buchu.

The leaves of Barosma Eckloniana Berg (regarded by Sonder[437] as a form of B. crenulata) have to our knowledge been imported on one occasion (1873). They are nearly an inch long, oval, rounded at the base, strongly crenate, and grow from pubescent shoots.

[434] It seems green as long as it is in the blue cupric liquid.

[435] Gmelin’s Chemistry, xviii 194.

[436] Blue Book published at Cape Town, 1873.

[437] Harvey and Sonder, Flora Capensis, i. (1859-60) 393.

We have seen other leaves which had been imported from South Africa and offered as buchu; but though probably derived from allied genera they were not to be mistaken for the genuine drug.

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RADIX TODDALIÆ

=Botanical Origin=—Toddalia aculeata Pers., a ramous prickly bush,[438] often climbing over the highest trees, common in the southern parts of the Indian peninsula as the Coromandel Coast, South Concans, and Canara, also found in Ceylon, Mauritius, the Indian Archipelago and Southern China.

=History=—The pungent aromatic properties which pervade the plant, but especially the fresh root-bark, are well known to the natives of India and have been utilized in their medical practice. They have also attracted the attention of Europeans, and the root of the plant is now recognized in the Pharmacopœia of India.

It is from this and other species of Toddalia, or from the allied genus Zanthoxylum,[439] that a drug is derived which under the name of Lopez Root had once some celebrity in Europe. This drug which was more precisely termed Radix Indica Lopeziana or Root of Juan Lopez Pigneiro, was first made known by the Italian physician Redi,[440] who described it in 1671 from specimens obtained by Pigneiro at the mouth of the river Zambesi in Eastern Africa,—the very locality in which in our times Toddalia lanceolata Lam. has been collected by Dr. Kirk.[441] It was actually introduced into European medicine by Gaubius[442] in 1771 as a remedy for diarrhœa, and acquired so much reputation that it was admitted to the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia of 1792. The root appears to have been sometimes imported from Goa, but its place of growth and botanical origin were entirely unknown, and it was always extremely rare and costly.[443] It has long been obsolete in all countries except Holland, where until recently it was to be met with in the shops. The Pharmacopœia Neerlandica of 1851 says of it “Origo botanica perquam dubia—Patria Malacca?”

[438] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, part 18.

[439] The root of a Zanthoxylum sent to us from Java by Mr. Binnendyk of the Buitenzorg Botanical Garden has exactly the aspect of that of Toddalia. The root of Z. Bungei which we have examined in the fresh state is also completely similar. It is covered with a soft, corky, yellow bark having a very bitter taste with a strong pungency like that of pellitory.

[440] Esperienze intorno a diverse cote naturali, Firenze, 1671. 121.

[441] Oliver, Flor. of Trop. Africa, i. (1868) 307.

[442] Adversaria, Leidae, p. 78.

[443] Our friend Dr. de Vry informs us that he remembers the price in Holland in 1828 being equivalent to about 24_s._ the ounce!

=Description=—The specimen of the root of Toddalia aculeata which we have examined was collected for us by Dr. G. Bidie of Madras whose statements regarding the stimulant and tonic action of the drug may be found in the Pharmacopœia of India, p. 442. It is a dense woody root in cylindrical, flexuous pieces, which have evidently been of considerable length and are from ½ to 1½ inches in diameter, covered with bark ⅒ to ¹/₁₂ of an inch in thickness. The bark has a soft, dull yellowish, suberous coat, wrinkled longitudinally, beneath which is a very thin layer of a bright yellow colour, and still lower and constituting two-thirds or more of the whole, is the firm, brown middle cortical layer and liber, which is the part chiefly possessing the characteristic pungency and bitterness of the drug. The yellow corky coat is however not devoid of bitterness. The wood is hard, of a pale yellow, and without taste and smell. The pores of the wood, which are rather large, are arranged in concentric order and traversed by numerous narrow medullary rays.

In a letter which Frappier[444] wrote to Guibourt from the island of Réunion where Toddalia aculeata is very common, he states that the roots of the plant are of enormous length (longueur incroyable) and rather difficult to get out of the basaltic rock into the fissures of which they penetrate. Mr. J. Horne of the Botanical Garden, Mauritius, has sent us a specimen of the root of this plant, the bark of which is of a dusky brown, with the suberous layer but little developed.

=Microscopic Structure=—We have examined the root for which we are indebted to Dr. Bidie, and may state that its cortical tissue is remarkable by the number of large cells filled with resin and essential oil; they are scattered through the whole tissue, the cork excepted. The parenchymatous cells are loaded with small starch granules or with crystals of oxalate of calcium. The vessels of younger roots abound in yellow resin.

=Chemical Composition=—None of the constituents of the Toddalia root of India have yet been satisfactorily examined. The bark contains an essential oil, which would be better extracted from fresh than from dry material. The tissue of the bark is but little coloured by salts of iron. In the aqueous infusion, tannic acid produces an abundant precipitate, probably of an indifferent bitter principle rather than of an alkaloid. We have been unable to detect the presence in the bark of berberine.

Lopez root was examined in Wittstein’s laboratory by Schnitzer[445] who found that the bark contains in addition to the usual substances a large proportion of resin,—a mixture probably of two or three different bodies. The essential oil afforded by the bark had an odour resembling cinnamon and melissa.

=Uses=—The drug has been introduced into the Pharmacopœia of India chiefly upon the recommendation of Dr. Bidie of Madras, who considers it of great value as a stimulating tonic. The bark rasped or shaved from the woody root is the only part that should be used.

[444] Journ. de Phar. v. (1867) 403.

[445] Wittstein’s Vierteljahresschrift für prakt. Pharm. xi. (1862) i.—The drug examined was the Lopez root sold at that period at Amsterdam.

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FOLIA PILOCARPI

Folia Jaborandi.

=Botanical Origin=—Pilocarpus pennatifolius[446] Lemaire, a slightly branched shrub, attaining about 10 feet in height. It is distributed through the eastern provinces of Brazil.

Pilocarpus Selloanus[447] Engler, occurring in Southern Brazil and Paraguay, appears to be not considerably different from P. pennatifolius.

=History=—Piso[448] recommended an infusion made with Ipecacuanha and Jaborandi. Plumier,[449] who also mentioned this, figured under the name of Jaborandi two plants of the order Piperaceæ. The introduction of the leaves of Pilocarpus pennatifolius into medical use is due to Dr. Coutinho of Pernambuco, 1874. The plant has been cultivated in European greenhouses since about the year 1847; we have repeatedly seen it flowering at Strassburg. Baillon in 1875 showed the fragments of Jaborandi as supplied by Coutinho to belong to P. pennatifolius, which had been described in 1852 by Lemaire. Holmes (1875) in examining the drug as imported from Pernambuco came to the same conclusion.

=Description=—The leaves of the species under examination are long-stalked, imparipennate, the opposite leaflets in 2 to 5, in cultivated plants most commonly in 2 pairs, the terminal one longer stalked, while the others are provided with a petiole attaining 1½ inch in length or remaining much shorter. The whole leaf is frequently 1½ feet long, the leaflets being often as much as 5 inches long by 2 inches wide. The latter are entire oblong, tapering or rounded at the base, tapering or obtuse or even emarginate at the apex. The leaflets are coriaceous, with a slightly revolute margin and a prominent midrib below. In transmitted light they show very numerous pellucid oil-glands.

The taste of the leaves of Pilocarpus is at first bitterish and aromatic; they subsequently produce a tingling sensation in the mouth and an abundant flow of saliva.

=Microscopic Structure=[450]—The oil-glands consist of large cells of the same structure as those occurring generally in the leaves of Rutaceæ, Aurantiaceæ, Myrtaceæ. In Pilocarpus they are largely distributed in the tissue covered on both sides of the leaf by the epidermis; the oil-cells are also abundantly met with in the petiole and in the bark of the stems and branches.

=Chemical Composition=—The active principle of Jaborandi is the alkaloid Pilocarpine, C₂₃H₃₅N₄O₄ + 4OH₂, discovered in 1875 by Hardy. It is an amorphous soft mass, but yielding crystallized salts, among which the hydrochlorate and the nitrate are now more frequently used than the drug itself. The leaves afford about ½ per cent. of the nitrate.

[446] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, part 32 (1878).

[447] Fig. by Engler in Flora Brasil. fasc. 65 (1874) tab. 30. Pilocarpus pauciflorus St. Hilaire (Flora Brasiliæ meridionalis, i. 1824. tab. 17) appears also to be very similar.

[448] Lib. iv. cap. 57, 59, and v. cap. 19, p. 310, of the work quoted in the appendix.

[449] Description des Plantes de l’Amérique, 1693. 58. Pl. lxxv. and lxxvi.

[450] Stiles, Pharm. J. vii. (1877) 629; also Lanessan’s French translation of the Pharmacographia, i. (1878) 253.

The occurrence of another peculiar alkaloid in Pilocarpus has been asserted, but not ultimately proved.

The leaves contain about ½ per cent. of essential oil, the prevailing constituent of it being a dextrogyrate terpene, C₁₀H₁₆, boiling at 178°, which forms a crystallized compound C₁₀H₁₆ + 2HCl melting at 49°·5 C.

=Uses=—Pilocarpine being a powerful diaphoretic and sialagogue, the leaves of Jaborandi are used to some extent in pharmaceutical preparations.

=Other Kinds of Jaborandi=—This name, as above stated, has originally been given to plants of the order Piperaceæ, some of which are still known in Brazil under the name Jaborandi. The following may be quoted as being used at least in that country: Serronia Jaborandi[451] Gaudichaud, Piper reticulatum L. (Enckea Miquel), Piper citrifolium Lamarck (Steffensia Kunth), Piper nodulosum Link, Artanthe mollicoma Miq.

Aubletia trifolia[452] Richard (Monniera L.) and Xanthoxylum elegans Engler, belonging to the same order as Pilocarpus itself, are also sometimes called Jaborandi.

We are not aware that other leaves than those of Pilocarpus are imported to some extent in Europe under the name of Jaborandi.

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AURANTIACEÆ

FRUCTUS LIMONIS.

Lemon; F. Citron, Limon; G. Citrone, Limone.

=Botanical Origin=—Citrus Limonum Risso (C. Medica var. β Linn.), a small tree 10 to 15 feet in height, planted here and there in gardens in many subtropical countries, but cultivated as an object of industry on the Mediterranean coast between Nice and Genoa, in Calabria, Sicily, Spain, and Portugal.

The tree which is supposed to represent the wild state of the lemon and lime, and as it seems to us after the examination of numerous specimens in the herbarium of Kew, of the citron (Citrus Medica Risso) also, is a native of the forests of Northern India, where it occurs in the valleys of Kumaon and Sikkim.

The cultivated lemon-tree is of rather irregular growth, with foliage somewhat pallid, sparse, and uneven, not forming the fine, close head of deep green that is so striking in the orange tree. The young shoots are of a dull purple; the flowers, which are produced all the year except during the winter, and are in part hermaphrodite and in part unisexual, have the corolla externally purplish; internally white, and a delicate aroma distinct from that of orange blossom. The fruit is pale yellow, ovoid, usually crowned by a nipple.

[451] Already known to Piso.

[452] The original Jaborandi of Piso, according to Peckolt. Dragendorff’s Jahresbericht, 1875. 163.

=History=—The name of the lemon in Sanskrit is Nimbuka; in Hindustani, Limbu, Limu, or Ninbu. It is probably originally a Cashmere word, which was transferred to the Sanskrit in comparatively modern times, not in the antiquity.[453] From these sounds the Arabians formed the word Limun, which has passed into the languages of Europe.

The lemon was unknown to the inhabitants of ancient Greece and Rome; but it is mentioned in the Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,[454] which is supposed to date from the 3rd or 4th century of our era. The introduction of the tree to Europe is due to the Arabians, yet at what precise period is somewhat doubtful. Arance and Limone are mentioned by an Arabic poet living in the 11th century, in Sicily, quoted by Falcando.[455] The geographer Edrisi,[456] who resided at the court of Roger II., king of Sicily, in the middle of the 12th century, mentions the lemon (limouna) as a very sour fruit of the size of an apple which was one of the productions of Mansouria on the Mahrân or Indus; and he speaks of it in a manner that leads one to infer it was not then known in Europe. This is the more probable from the fact that there is no mention either of lemon or orange in a letter written A.D. 1239 concerning the cultivation of the lands of the Emperor Frederick II. at Palermo,[457] a locality in which these fruits are now produced in large quantity.

On the other hand the lemon is noticed at great length by Ibn Baytar of Malaga, who flourished in the first half of the 13th century, but of its cultivation in Spain at that period there is no actual mention.[458] In 1369 at least citron trees, “arbores citronorum,” were planted in Genoa,[459] and there is evidence that also the lemon-tree was grown on the Riviera di Ponente about the middle of the 15th century, since Limones and also Citri are mentioned in the manuscript Livre d’Administration of the city of Savona, under date 1486.[460] The lemon was cultivated as early as 1494 in the Azores, whence the fruit used to be largely shipped to England; but since the year 1838 the exportation has totally ceased.[461]

=Description=—The fruit of Citrus Limonum as found in the shops[462] is from about 2 to 4 inches in length, egg-shaped with a nipple more or less prominent at the apex; its surface, of a pale yellow, is even or rugged, covered with a polished epidermis. The parenchyme within the latter abounds in large cells filled with fragrant essential oil. The roughness of the surface of the rind is due to the oil-cells. The peel, which varies considerably in thickness but is never so thick as that of the citron, is internally white and fibrous, and is adherent to the pale yellow pulp. The latter is divided into 10 or 12 segments each containing 2 or 3 seeds. It abounds in a pale yellow acid juice having a pleasant sour taste and a slight peculiar odour quite distinct from that of the peel. When removed from the pulp by pressure, the juice appears as a rather turbid yellowish fluid having a sp. gr. which varies from 1·040 to 1·045, and containing in each fluid ounce from 40 to 46 grains of citric acid, or about 9½ per cent.[463] In Italy all the fine and perfect fruit is exported; the windfalls and the damaged fruit are used for the production of the essential oil and the juice. About 13,000 lemons of this kind yield one pipe (108 gallons) of raw juice. Sicilian juice in November will contain about 9 ounces of citric acid per gallon, but 6 ounces when afforded by the fruit collected in April. The juice is boiled down in copper vessels, over an open fire, till its specific gravity is about 1·239.[464] Lemon juice (Succus limonis) for administration as a medicine should be pressed as wanted from the recent fruit whenever the latter is obtainable.

[453] Dr. Rice in New Remedies, 1878, 263; also private information.

[454] Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, iii. (1856) 68.

[455] Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, ii. (1858) 444.

[456] Géographie d’Edrisi, traduite par Jaubert, i. (1836) 162.

[457] Huillard-Bréholles, Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi, Paris, v. (1857) 571.

[458] Heil-und Nahrungsmittel von Ebn Baithar, übersetzt von Sontheimer, ii. (1842) 452.

[459] Belgrano, Vita privata dei Genovesi, Genova (1875) 158.

[460] Gallesio, Traité du Citrus (1811) 89, 103.

[461] Consul Smallwood, in Consular Reports, Aug. 1873. 986.

[462] There are many kinds of lemon as well as of orange which are never seen in commerce. Risso and Poiteau enumerate 25 varieties of the former and 30 of the latter. See also Alfonso, Coltivazione degli Agrumi, Palermo, 2nd edition, 1875.

[463] Stoddart, in Pharm. Journ. x. (1869) 203.

[464] R. Warington, Pharm. Journ. v. (1875) 385.

The peel (Cortex limonis) cut in somewhat thin ribbons from the fresh fruit is used in pharmacy, and is far preferable to that sold in a dried state.

=Microscopic Structure of the Peel.=—The epidermis exhibits numerous stomata; the parenchyme of the pericarp encloses large oil-cells, surrounded by small tabular cells. The inner spongy tissue is built up of very remarkable branched cells, separated by large intercellular spaces. A solution of iodine in iodide of potassium imparts to the cell-walls a transient blue coloration. The outer layers of the parenchymatous tissue contain numerous yellowish lumps of a substance which assumes a brownish hue by iodine, and yields a yellow solution if potash be added. Alkaline tartrate of copper is reduced by this substance, which probably consists of hesperidin. There also occur large crystals of oxalate of calcium, belonging to the monoclinic system. The interior tissue is irregularly traversed by small vascular bundles.

=Chemical Composition=—The peel of the lemon abounds in essential oil, which is a distinct article of commerce, and will be described hereafter.

Lemons, as well as other fruits of the genus Citrus, contain a bitter principle, Hesperidin, of which E. Hoffmann[465] obtained 5 to 8 per cent. from unripe bitter oranges. He extracted them with dilute alcohol, after they had previously been exhausted by cold water. The alcohol should contain about 1 per cent. of caustic potash; the liquid on cooling is acidulated with hydrochloric acid, when it yields a yellowish crystalline deposit of hesperidin, which may be obtained colourless and tasteless by recrystallization from boiling alcohol. By dilute sulphuric acid (1 per cent.) hesperidin is broken up as follows:—

C₂₂H₂₆O₁₂ = C₁₆H₁₄O₆ + C₆H₁₂O₆. Hesperidin. Hesperetin. Glucose.

Hesperidin is very little soluble even in boiling water or in ether, but dissolves readily in hot acetic acid, also in alkaline solutions, the latter then turning soon yellow and reddish. Pure hesperidin, as presented to one of us by Hoffmann, darkens when it is shaken with alcoholic perchloride of iron, and turns dingy blackish brown when gently warmed with the latter.

[465] Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft (1876) 26, 685, 693.

Hesperetin forms crystals melting at 223° C., soluble both in alcohol or ether, not in water; they taste sweet. They are split up by potash in Phloroglucin and Hesperetic acid, C₁₀H₁₀O₄.

On addition of ferric chloride, thin slices of the peel are darkened, owing probably to some derivative of hesperidin, or to hesperidin itself.

The name hesperidin had also been applied to yellow crystals extracted from the shaddock, Citrus decumana L., the dried flowers of which afford about 2 per cent. of that substance. It is, as shown in 1879 by E. Hoffmann, quite different from hesperidin as described above; he calls it Naringin and assigns to it the formula C₂₃H₂₆O₁₂+4OH₂. Naringin is readily soluble in hot water or in alcohol, not in ether or chloroform. Its solutions turn brown-red on addition of ferric chloride.

Lemon juice, some of the characters of which have been already noticed, is an important article in a dietetic point of view, being largely consumed on shipboard for the prevention of scurvy. In addition to citric acid it contains 3 to 4 per cent. of gum and sugar, and 2·28 per cent. of inorganic salts, of which according to Stoddart only a minute proportion is potash. Cossa[466] on the other hand, who has recently studied the products of the lemon tree with much care, has found that the ash of dried lemon juice contains 54 per cent. of potash, besides 15 per cent. of phosphoric acid.

Stoddart has pointed out the remarkable tendency of citric acid to undergo decomposition,[467] and has proved that in lemons kept from February to July this acid generally decreases in quantity, at first slowly, but afterwards rapidly, until at the end of the period it entirely ceases to exist, having been all split up into glucose and carbonic acid. At the same time the sp. gr. of the juice was found to have undergone but slight diminution:—thus it was 1·044 in February, 1·041 in May, and 1·027 in July, and the fruit had hardly altered in appearance. Lemon juice may with some precautions be kept unimpaired for months or even years. Yet it is capable of undergoing fermentation by reason of the sugar, gum, and albuminoid matters which it contains.

=Commerce=—Lemons are chiefly imported from Sicily, to a smaller extent from the Riviera of Genoa and from Spain. From the published statistics of trade, in which lemons are classed together with oranges under one head, it appears that these fruits are being imported in increasing quantities. The value of the shipments to the United Kingdom in 1872 (largely exceeding those of any previous year) was £1,154,270. Of this sum, £986,796 represents the value of the oranges and lemons imported from Spain, Portugal, the Canary Islands and Azores; £155,330 the shipments of the same fruit from Italy; and £3,825 those from Malta.

Of concentrated lemon juice there were exported in 1877 from Messina 1,631,332 kilogrammes, valued at 2,446,996 lire. The value of concentrated lime juice exported in 1874 from Montserrat was £3,390. From Dominica, 11,285 gallons, value £1,825, were shipped in 1875.

[466] Gazetta Chimica Italiana, ii. (1872) 385; Journ. of Chem. Soc. xi (1873) 402.

[467] Stoddart’s statement that if potash be added to lemon juice, oxalic acid may be detected in the mixture after a few days, is not supported by our observations.

=Uses=—Lemon peel is used in medicine solely as a flavouring ingredient. Freshly prepared lemon juice is often administered with an alkaline bicarbonate in the form of an effervescing draught, or in a free state.

Concentrated lemon juice is imported for the purpose of making citric acid; it is derived not only from the lemon, but also, to a smaller extent, from the lime and bergamot. Lime juice of the West Indies is chiefly used as a beverage; small quantities of it are also exported for the manufacture of citric acid. The culture of Citrus Limetta Risso, the lime, was introduced in Montserrat in 1852.

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OLEUM LIMONIS

Oleum Limonum; Essential Oil or Essence of Lemon; F. Essence de Citron; G. Citronenöl.

=Botanical Origin=—Citrus Limonum Risso (see p. 114).

=History=—The chemists of the 16th century were well acquainted with the method of extracting essential oils by distillation. Besson in his work L’art et moyen parfaict de tirer huyles et eaux de tous medicaments simples et oleogineux, published at Paris in 1571, mentions lemon-(citron) and orange-peel among the substances subjected to this process. Giovanni Battista Porta,[468] a learned Neapolitan writer, describes the method of preparing Oleum ex corticibus Citri to consist in removing the peel of the fruit with a rasp and distilling it so comminuted with water; and adds that the oils of lemon and orange may be obtained in the same manner. Essence of lemon of two kinds, namely expressed and distilled, was sold in Paris in the time of Pomet, 1692.

=Production=—Essential oil of lemon is manufactured in Sicily, at Reggio in Calabria, and at Mentone and Nice in France.

The lemons are used while still rather green and unripe, as being richer in oil than when quite mature. Only the small and irregular fruit, such as is not worth exporting, is employed for affording the essence.

The process followed in Sicily and Calabria may be thus described;[469] it is performed in the months of November and December.

[468] Magiæ Naturalis libri xx. Neapoli. 1589. 188.

[469] Through the kindness of Signor Mallandrino of Giampilieri near Messina, I had the pleasure of seeing how the essence is made. Though the time of my visit (13 May 1872) was not that of the manufacture, Signor M. sent for one of his workmen, and having procured a few lemons, set him to work on them in order that I might have ocular demonstration of the process.—D. H.

The workman first cuts off the peel in three thick longitudinal slices, leaving the central pulp of a three-cornered shape with a little peel at either end. This central pulp he cuts transversely in the middle, throwing it on one side and the pieces of peel on the other. The latter are allowed to remain till the next day and are then treated thus: the workman seated holds in the palm of his left hand a flattish piece of sponge, wrapping it round his forefinger. With the other he places on the sponge one of the slices of peel, the outer surface downwards, and then presses the zest-side (which is uppermost) so as to give it for the moment a convex instead of a concave form. The vesicles are thus ruptured, and the oil which issues from them is received in the sponge with which they are in contact. Four or five squeezes are all the workman gives to each slice of peel, which done he throws it aside. Though each bit of peel has attached to it a small portion of pulp, the workman contrives to avoid pressing the latter. As the sponge gets saturated the workman wrings it forcibly, receiving its contents in a coarse earthen bowl provided with a spout; in this rude vessel, which is capable of holding at least three pints, the oil separates from the watery liquid which accompanies it and is then decanted.

The yield is stated to be very variable, 400 fruits affording 9 to 14 ounces of essence. The prisms of pulp and the exhausted pieces of peel are submitted to pressure in order to extract from them lemon juice, and are said to be also subjected to distillation. The foregoing is termed the sponge-process; it is also applied to the orange. It appears rude and wasteful, but when honestly performed it yields an excellent product.

Essence of lemon is prepared at Mentone and Nice by a different method. The object being to set free and to collect the oil contained in the vesicles of the peel, an apparatus is employed, which may be thus described:—a stout saucer or shallow basin of pewter, about 8½ inches in diameter with a lip on one side for convenience of pouring. Fixed in the bottom of this saucer are a number of stout, sharp, brass pins, standing up about half an inch; the centre of the bottom is deepened into a tube about an inch in diameter and five inches in length, closed at its lower end. This vessel, which is called an écuelle à piquer, has therefore some resemblance to a shallow, dish-shaped funnel, the tube of which is closed below.

The workman takes a lemon in the hand, and rubs it over the sharp pins, turning it round so that the oil-vessels of the entire surface may be punctured. The essential oil which is thus liberated is received in the saucer whence it flows down into the tube; and as this latter becomes filled, it is poured into another vessel that it may separate from the turbid aqueous liquid that accompanies it. It is finally filtered and is then known as Essence de Citron au zeste. A small additional produce is sometimes obtained by immersing the scarified lemons in warm water and separating the oil which floats off.

A second kind of essence termed Essence de Citron distillée is obtained by rubbing the surface of fresh lemons, or of those which have been submitted to the process just described, on a coarse grater of tinned iron, by which the portion of peel richest in essential oil is removed. This grated peel is subjected to distillation with water, and yields a colourless essence of very inferior fragrance, which is sold at a low price.

=Description=[470]—The oil obtained by the sponge-process and that of the écuelle à piquer are mobile liquids of a faint yellow colour, of exquisite fragrance and bitterish aromatic taste.

[470] For specimens of the Essence au zeste and of the Essence distillée of guaranteed purity we have to thank M. Médecin, distiller of essences, Mentone; and Messrs. G. Pannucio e figli, for an authentic sample of the essence made by the sponge process in their establishment at Reggio. We have also had a small quantity prepared by the écuelle by one of ourselves near Mentone, 15th June 1872.—D. H.

The different specimens which we have examined are readily miscible with bisulphide of carbon, but dissolve sparingly in spirit of wine (0·830). An equal weight of the oil and of spirit of wine forms a turbid mixture. No peculiar coloration is produced by mixture with perchloride of iron.

The oils are dextrogyre, but differ in their rotatory power, as may be illustrated by the following results, which we obtained by examining them in a column 50 millimetres long in the polaristrobometer of Wild. The oil of Signori Panuccio, due to the sponge-process (p. 118, note 2), deviated 20·9°, that of Monsieur Médecin (Essence de Citron au zeste) obtained by the éculle à piquer deviated 33·4° and his distilled oil 28·3°.

=Chemical Composition=—The prevailing portion of most essential oils of the Aurantiaceæ agrees with the formula C₁₀H₁₆; the differences which they exhibit chiefly concern their optical properties, odour, and colour. The boiling point mostly varies from about 170° to 180° C., the sp. gr. between 0·83 and 0·88. These oils are a mixture of isomeric hydrocarbons, and also contain a small amount of cymene, C₁₀H₁₄, and of oxygenated oils, not yet well known; of these we may infer the presence either from analytical results or simply from the fact that the crude oils are altered by metallic sodium. If they are purified by repeated rectification over that metal, they are finally no longer altered by it. Oils thus purified cease to possess their original fragrance, and often resemble oil of turpentine, with which they agree in composition and general chemical behaviour.

As to essential oil of lemons, its chief constituent is the terpene, C₁₀H₁₆, which, like oil of turpentine, easily yields crystals of terpin, C₁₀H₁₆ 3OH₂. There is further present, according to Tilden (1879) another hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, which already boils at 160° C., whereas the foregoing boils at 176° C. Lastly a small amount of cymene and of a compound acetic ether, C₂H₃O(C₁₀H₁₇O), would appear to occur also in oil of lemons. The crude oil of lemons already yields the crystalline compound C₁₀H₁₆ + 2HCl, when saturated with anhydrous hydrochloric gas, whereas by the same treatment oil of turpentine affords the solid compound C₁₀H₁₆ + HCl.

Essential oil of lemons (not the distilled) when long kept deposits a greasy mass, from which we have obtained small crystals apparently of Bergaptene (p. 123).

=Commerce=—Essence of lemons is shipped chiefly from Messina and Palermo, packed in copper bottles called in Italian ramiere and by English druggists “jars” holding 25 to 50 kilo. or more; sometimes in tin bottles of smaller size. The quantity of essences of lemon, orange and bergamot exported from Sicily in 1871 was 368,800 lb., valued at £144,520, of which about two-thirds were shipped to England.[471] In 1877 the export of these essential oils from Messina amounted to 306,948 kilogrammes, valued at 6,130,960 lire.

[471] Consul Dennis, On the Commerce, &c. of Sicily in 1869, 1870, 1871. Reports from H.M. Consuls. No. 4. 1873.

=Uses=—Essence of lemon is used in perfumery, and as a flavouring ingredient; and though much sold by druggists is scarcely employed in medicine.

=Adulteration=—Few drugs are more rarely to be found in a state of purity than essence of lemon. In fact it is stated that almost all that comes into the market is more or less diluted with oil of turpentine or with the cheaper distilled oil of lemons. Manufacturers of the essence complain that the demand for a cheap article forces them to this falsification of their product.

OLEUM BERGAMOTTÆ.

Oleum Bergamii; Essence or Essential Oil of Bergamot; F. Essence de Bergamotte; G. Bergamottöl.

=Botanical Origin=—Citrus Bergamia var. vulgaris Risso et Poiteau,[472] a small tree closely resembling in flowers and foliage the Bitter Orange. Its fruit is 2½ to 3 inches in diameter, nearly spherical, or slightly pear-shaped, frequently crowned by the persistent style; it is of a pale golden yellow like a lemon,[473] with the peel smooth and thin, abounding in essential oil of a peculiar fragrance; the pulp is pale yellowish green, of a bitterish taste, and far less acid than that of the lemon.

The tree is cultivated at Reggio in Calabria, and is unknown in a wild state.

=History=—The bergamot is one of the cultivated forms which abound in the genus Citrus, and which constitute the innumerable varieties of the orange, lemon and citron. Whether it is most nearly related to the lemon or to the orange is a point discussed as early as the beginning of the last century. Gallesio[474] remarks that it so evidently combines the characters of the two that it should be regarded as a hybrid between them. The bergamot first appeared in the latter part of the 17th century. It is not mentioned in the grand work on orange trees of Ferrari,[475] published at Rome in 1646, nor in the treatise of Commelyn[476] (1676), nor in the writings of Lanzoni (1690),[477] or La Quintinie (1692).[478] So far as we know, it is first noticed in a little book called Le Parfumeur François, printed at Lyons in 1693. The author who calls himself Le Sieur Barbe, parfumeur, says that the Essence de Cedra ou Bergamotte is obtained from the fruits of a lemon-tree which has been grafted on the stem of a bergamot pear; he adds that it is got by squeezing small bits of the peel with the fingers in a bottle or globe large enough to allow the hand to enter.

[472] Histoire naturelle des Orangers, Paris, 1818. p. 111. tab. 53, or the same work, new edition, by Dubreuil, 1873, p. 82. We accept the name given by these authors for the sake of convenience and definiteness, and not because we concur in their opinion that the Bergamot deserves to be ranked as a distinct botanical species.

[473] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, part 31.

[474] Traité du Citrus, 1811. 118.

[475] Hesperides, seu de malorum, aureorum cultura et usu.

[476] Nederlantze Hesperides, Amsterd. 1676. fol. (an English translation in 1683).

[477] Citrologia, Ferrariæ, 1690.

[478] Instruction pour les Jardins fruitiers ... avec un traité des Orangers, ed. 2, 1692.

Volkamer of Nuremberg, who produced a fine work on the Citron tribe in 1708, has a chapter on the Limon Bergamotta, which he describes as gloria limonum et fructus inter omnes nobilissimus. He states that the Italians prepare from it the finest essences, which are sold at a high price.[479]

But, as shown by one of us,[480] the essential oil of bergamot had already, in 1688, a place among the stores of an apothecary of the German town of Giessen.

The name Bergamotta was originally applied to a large kind of pear, called in Turkish “beg-ârmûdî,” i.e. prince’s pear.[481]

=Production=—The bergamot is cultivated at Reggio, on low ground near the sea, and in the adjacent villages. The trees are often intermixed with lemon and orange trees, and the soil is well irrigated and cropped with vegetables.

The essential oil (Oleum Bergamottæ) is obtained from the full-grown but still unripe and more or less green fruits, gathered in the months of November and December. They are richer in oil than any one of the allied fruits. It was formerly made like that of lemon by the sponge-process, but during the last 20 years this method has been generally superseded by the introduction of a special machine for the extraction of the essential oil. In this machine the fruits are placed in a strong, saucer-like, metallic dish, about 10 inches in diameter, having in the centre a raised opening which with the outer edge forms a broad groove or channel; the dish is fitted with a cover of similar form. The inner surface both of the dish and cover is rendered rough by a series of narrow, radiating metal ridges of blades which are about ¼ of an inch high and resemble the backs of knifes. The dish is also furnished with some small openings to allow of the outflow of essential oil; and both dish and cover are arranged in a metallic cylinder, placed over a vessel to receive the oil. By a simple arrangement of cog-wheels moved by a handle, the cover, which is very heavy, is made to revolve rapidly over the dish, and the fruit lying in the groove between the two is carried round, and at the same time is subjected to the action of the sharp ridges, which, rupturing the oil-vessels, cause the essence to escape, and set it free to flow out by the small openings in the bottom of the dish. The fruits are placed in the machine, 6, 8, or more at a time, according to their size, and subjected to the rotatory action above described for about half a minute, when the machine is stopped, they are removed, and fresh ones substituted. About 7,000 fruits can thus be worked in one of these machines in a day. The yield of oil is said to be similar to that of lemon, namely 2½ to 3 ounces from 100 fruits.

[479] Hesperides Norimbergenses, 1713. lib. 3. cap. 26. and p. 156 b. (We quote from the Latin edition.)

[480] Flückiger, Documente zur Geschichte der Pharmacie, Halle, 1876. 72.

[481] Information, for which I am indebted to Dr. Rice.—The name has no reference to the town of Bergamo, where bergamots cannot succeed.—F. A. F.

Essence of bergamot made by the machine is of a greener tint than that obtained by the old sponge-process. During some weeks after extraction it gradually deposits a quantity of white greasy matter (bergaptene), which, after having been exhausted as much as possible by pressure, is finally subjected to distillation with water in order to separate the essential oil it still contains.

The fruits from which the essence has been extracted are submitted to pressure, and the juice, which is much inferior in acidity to lemon juice, is concentrated and sold for the manufacture of citric acid. Finally, the residue from which both essence and juice have been removed, is consumed as food by oxen.

=Description=[482]—Essential oil of bergamot is a thin and mobile fluid of peculiar and very fragrant odour, bitterish taste, and slightly acid reaction. It has a pale greenish yellow tint, due to traces of chlorophyll, as may be shown by the spectroscope. Its sp. gr. is 0·86 to 0·88; its boiling point varies from 183° to 195° C.

The oil is miscible with spirit of wine (0·83 sp. gr.), absolute alcohol, as well as with crystallizable acetic acid. Four parts dissolve clearly one part of bisulphide of carbon, but the solution becomes turbid if a larger proportion of the latter is added. Bisulphide of carbon itself is incapable of dissolving clearly any appreciable quantity of the oil. A mixture of 10 drops of the oil, 50 drops of bisulphide of carbon and one of strong sulphuric acid has an intense yellow hue. Perchloride of iron imparts to bergamot oil dissolved in alcohol a dingy brown colour.

Panuccio’s oil of bergamot examined in the same way as that of lemon (p. 120) deviates 7° to the right, and has therefore a dextrogyre power very inferior to that of other oils of the same class.[483] But it probably varies in this respect, for commercial specimens which we judged to be of good quality deviated from 6·8° to 10·4° to the right.

=Chemical Composition=—If essential oil of bergamot is submitted to rectification, the portions that successively distill over do not accord in rotatory power or in boiling point, a fact which proves it to be a mixture of several oils, as is further confirmed by analysis. It appears to consist of hydrocarbons, C₁₀H₁₆, and their hydrates, neither of which have as yet been satisfactorily isolated. Oil of bergamot, like that of turpentine, yields crystals of the composition C₁₀H₁₆ + 3H₂O, if 8 parts are allowed to stand some weeks with 1 part of spirit of wine, 2 of nitric acid (sp. gr. 1·2) and 10 of water, the mixture being frequently shaken. No solid compound is produced by saturating the oil with anhydrous hydrochloric gas.

The greasy matter that is deposited from oil of bergamot soon after its extraction, and in small quantity is often noticeable in that of commerce, is called Bergaptene or Bergamot Camphor. We have obtained it in fine, white, acicular crystals, neutral and inodorous, by repeated solution in spirit of wine. Its composition according to the analysis of Mulder (1837) and of Ohme (1839) answers to the formula C₉H₆O₃, which in our opinion requires further investigation. Crystallized bergaptene is abundantly soluble in chloroform, ether, or bisulphide of carbon; the alcoholic solution is not altered by ferric salts.

[482] The characters are taken from some Essence of Bergamot presented to one of us (15 May 1872) as a type-sample by Messrs. G. Panuccio e figli, manufacturers of essences at Reggio and also large cultivators of the bergamot orange.

[483] See however Oleum Neroli, p. 127.

=Commerce=—Essence of bergamot, as it is always termed in trade, is chiefly shipped from Messina and Palermo in the same kind of bottles as are used for essence of lemon.

=Uses=—Much employed in perfumery, but in medicine only occasionally for the sake of imparting an agreeable odour to ointments.

=Adulteration=—Essence of bergamot, like that of lemon, is extensively and systematically adulterated, and very little is sent into the market entirely pure. It is often mixed with oil of turpentine, but a finer adulteration is to dilute it with essential oil of the leaves or with that obtained by distillation of the peel or of the residual fruits. Some has of late been adulterated with petroleum.

The optical properties, as already mentioned, may afford some assistance in detecting fraudulent admixtures, though as regards oil of turpentine it must be borne in mind that there are levogyre as well as dextrogyre varieties. This latter oil and likewise that of lemon is less soluble in spirit of wine than that of bergamot.

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CORTEX AURANTII

Bitter Orange Peel; F. Ecorce ou Zestes d’Oranges amères; G. Pomeranzenschale.

=Botanical Origin=—Citrus vulgaris Risso (C. Aurantium var. a amara Linn., C. Bigaradia Duhamel).

The Bitter or Seville or Bigarade Orange, Bigaradier[484] of the French, is a small tree extensively cultivated in the warmer parts of the Mediterranean region, especially in Spain, and existing under many varieties.

Northern India is the native country of the orange tree. In Gurhwal, Sikkim, and Khasia there occurs a wild orange which is the supposed parent of the cultivated orange, whether Sweet or Bitter.

The Bitter Orange reproduces itself from seed, and is regarded, at least by cultivators, as quite distinct from the Sweet Orange, from which however it cannot be distinguished by any important botanical characters. Generally speaking, it differs from the latter in having the fruit rugged on the surface, of a more deep or reddish-orange hue, with the pulp very sour and bitter. The peel, as well as the flowers and leaves, are more aromatic than the corresponding parts of the Sweet Orange, and the petiole is more broadly winged.

=History=—The orange was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans; and its introduction to Europe is due to the Arabs, who, according to Gallesio,[485] appear to have established the tree first in Eastern Africa, Arabia, and Syria, whence it was gradually conveyed to Italy, Sicily, and Spain. In the opinion of the writer just quoted, the bitter orange was certainly known at the commencement of the 10th century to the Arabian physicians, one of whom, Avicenna,[486] employed its juice in medicine.

[484] From the Basque “bizarra” = beard (Rice, New Remedies, 1878. 231), or from the Sanskrit Bijouri.

[485] Traité du Citrus, Paris, 1811. 222.

[486] Opera, ed. Valgrisi 1564. lib. v. sum. 1. tract. 9. p. 289.—The passage, which is the following, seems rather inconclusive:—“ ... succi acetositatis citri et succi acetositatis citranguli.”

There is strong evidence to show that the orange first cultivated in Europe was the Bitter Orange or Bigarade. The orange tree at Rome, said to have been planted by St. Dominic about A.D. 1200, and which still exists at the monastery of St. Sabina, bears a bitter fruit; and the ancient trees standing in the garden of the Alcazar at Seville are also of this variety. Finally, the oranges of Syria (ab indigenis Orenges nuncupati) described by Jacques de Vitri, Bishop of Acon (ob. A.D. 1214) were acidi seu pontici saporis.[487]

The Sweet Orange began to be cultivated about the middle of the 15th century, having been introduced from the East by the Portuguese. It has probably long existed in Southern China, and may have been taken thence to India. In the latter country there are but few districts in which its cultivation is successful, and the Bitter Orange is hardly known at all. The name it has long borne of China[488] or Portugal Orange indicates what has been the usual opinion as to its origin. It probably alludes more exactly to a superior variety brought about 1630 from China to Portugal.[489]

One of the first importations of oranges into England occurred in A.D. 1290, in which year a Spanish ship came to Portsmouth, of the cargo of which the queen of Edward I. bought one frail of Seville figs, one of raisins or grapes, one bale of dates, 230 pomegranates, 15 citrons, and 7 oranges (“poma de orenge”).[490]

=Description=—The Bitter Orange known in London as the Seville Orange is a globular fruit, resembling in size, form, and structure the common Sweet Orange, but having the peel much rougher, and when mature of a somewhat deeper hue. The pulp of the fruit is filled with an acid bitter juice. The ripe fruit is imported into London; the peel is removed from it with a sharp knife in one long spiral strip, and quickly dried, or it is sold in the fresh state. It is the more esteemed when cut thin, so as to include as little as possible of the white inner layer.

Well-dried orange peel should be externally of a bright tint and white on its inner surface; it should have a grateful aromatic smell and bitter taste. The peel is also largely imported into London ready dried, especially from Malta. We have observed it from this latter place of three qualities, namely in elliptic pieces or quarters, in broad curled strips, and lastly a very superior kind, almost wholly free from white zest, in strips less than ⅛ of an inch in width, cut apparently by a machine. Such needless subdivision as this last has undergone must greatly favour an alteration and waste of the essential oil. Foreign-dried orange peel fetches a lower price than that dried in England.

=Microscopic Structure=—There is no difference between the tissues of this drug and those of lemon peel.

[487] Vitriaco, Hist. orient. et occident. 1597. cap. 86.

[488] Hence the Dutch Sinaasappel or Appelsina and the German Apfelsine.

[489] Goeze, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Orangengewächse, Hamburg, 1874. 29.

[490] Manners and Household Expenses of England in the 13th and 15th centuries, Lond. (Roxburghe Club) 1841. xlviii.

=Chemical Composition=—The essential oil to which the peel of the orange owes its fragrant odour, is a distinct article of commerce, and will be noticed hereafter under a separate head. The other constituents of the peel probably agree with those of lemon peel. The substance mentioned under the name of Hesperidin (p. 116) particularly abounds in unripe bitter oranges.

=Uses=—Bitter orange peel is much used in medicine as an aromatic tonic.

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OLEUM NEROLI

Oleum Aurantii florum; Oil or Essence of Neroli; F. Essence de Néroli; G. Neroliöl.

=Botanical Origin=—Citrus vulgaris Risso. (See page 124.)

=History=—Porta, the Italian philosopher of the 16th century referred to (p. 118), was acquainted with the volatile oil of the flowers of the citron tribe (“Oleum ex citriorum floribus”), which he obtained by the usual process of distillation, and describes as possessing the most exquisite fragrance. That distilled from orange flowers acquired a century later (1675-1685) the name of Essence of Neroli from Anne-Marie de la Trémoille-Noirmoutier, second wife of Flavio Orsini, duke of Bracciano and prince of Nerola or Neroli. This lady employed it for the perfuming of gloves, hence called in Italy Guanti di Neroli.[491] It was known in Paris to Pomet, who says[492] the perfumers have given it the name of Neroli, and that it is made in Rome and in Provence.

=Production=—Oil of Neroli is prepared from the fresh flowers of the Bigarade or Bitter Orange by the ordinary process of distillation with water, conducted in small copper stills. The flowers of all the allied plants are far less aromatic. The water which distills over with the oil constitutes, after the removal of the latter from its surface, the Orange Flower Water (Aqua aurantii florum vel Aqua Naphæ)[493] of commerce. The manufacture is carried on chiefly in the south of France at Grasse, Cannes, and Nice. The yield is about 0·6 to 0·7 per cent. of oil from fresh flowers, as stated by Poiteau et Risso.[494] The flowers of the sweet orange afford but half that amount of oil.

=Description and Chemical Composition=—Oil of Neroli as found in commerce is seldom pure, for it generally contains an admixture of the essential oil of orange-leaf called Essence of Petit Grain.

By the kind assistance of Mr. F. G. Warrick of Nice, we have obtained a sample of Bigarade Neroli of guaranteed purity, to which the following observations relate. It is of a brownish hue, most fragrant odour, bitterish aromatic taste, and is neutral to test-paper. Its sp. gr. at 11° C. is 0·889. When mixed with alcohol, it displays a bright violet fluorescence, quite distinct from the blue fluorescence of a solution of quinine. In oil of Neroli the phenomenon may be shown most distinctly by pouring a little spirit of wine on to the surface of the essential oil, and causing the liquid to gently undulate. The oil is but turbidly miscible with bisulphide of carbon. It assumes a very pure, intense, and permanent crimson hue if shaken with a saturated solution of bisulphide of sodium. Examined in a column of 100 mm. we observed the oil to deviate the ray of polarized light 6° to the right.

[491] Menagio, Origini della Lingua Italiana, 1685; Dict. de Trévoux, Paris, vi. (1771) 178.—The town of Nerola is about 16 miles north of Tivoli.

[492] Histoire des Drogues, 1694. 234. ii.

[493] Naphé or Naphore—according to Poiteau et Risso, Hist. Nat. des Orangers 1873. 211, these names perhaps originated in Languedoc.

[494] L. c. 211.

Subjected to distillation, the larger part of the oil passes over at 185°-195° C.; we found this portion to be colourless, yet to display in a marked manner the violet fluorescence and also to retain the odour of the original oil. The portion remaining in the retort was mixed with about the same volume of alcohol (90 per cent.) and some drops of water added, yet not sufficient to occasion turbidity. A very small amount of the crystalline Neroli Camphor then made its appearance, floating on the surface of the liquid; by re-solution in boiling alcohol it was obtained in crystals of rather indistinct form. The redistilled oil gave no camphor whatever.

Neroli Camphor was first noticed by Boullay in 1828. According to our observations it is a neutral, inodorous, tasteless substance, fusible at 55° C., and forming on cooling a crystalline mass. The crystallization should be effected by cooling the hot alcoholic solution, no good crystals being obtainable by slow evaporation or by sublimation. The produce was extremely small, about 60 grammes of oil having yielded not more than 0·1 gramme. Perhaps this scantiness of produce was due to the oil being a year and a half old, for according to Plisson[495] the camphor diminishes the longer the oil is kept.[496] We were unable to obtain any similar substance from the oils of bergamot, petit grain, or orange peel.

Orange Flower Water is a considerable article of manufacture among the distillers of essential oils in the south of Europe, and is imported thence for use in pharmacy. According to Boullay[497] it is frequently acid to litmus when first made,—is better if distilled in small than in large quantities, and if made from the petals per se, rather than from the entire flowers. He also states that only 2 lb. of water should be drawn from 1 lb. of flowers, or 3 lb. if petals alone are placed in the still. As met with in commerce, orange flower water is colourless or of a faintly greenish yellow tinge, almost perfectly transparent, with a delicious odour and a bitter taste. Acidulated with nitric acid, it acquires a pinkish hue more or less intense, which disappears on saturation by an alkali.

=Uses=—Oil of Neroli is consumed almost exclusively in perfumery. Orange flower water is frequently used in medicine to give a pleasant odour to mixtures and lotions.

=Adulteration=—The large variation in value of oil of Neroli as shown by price-currents[498] indicates a great diversity of quality. Besides being very commonly mixed, as already stated, with the distilled oil of the leaves (Essence de Petit Grain)[499], it is sometimes reduced by addition of the less fragrant oil obtained from the flowers of the Portugal or Sweet Orange. In some of these adulterations we must conclude that orange flower water participate: metallic contamination of the latter is not unknown.

[495] Journ. de Pharm. xv. (1829) 152.

[496] Yet we extracted it from an old sample labelled “Essence de Néroli Portugal—Méro.”

[497] Bulletin de Pharm., i. (1809) 337-341.

[498] Thus in the price-list of a firm at Grasse, Neroli is quoted as of four qualities, the lowest or “commercial” being less than half the price of the finest.

[499] We have been informed on good authority that the Neroli commonly sold contains ⅜ of Essence of Petit Grain, and ⅛ of Essence of Bergamot, the remaining ⁴/₈ being true Neroli.

Other Products of the genus Citrus.

=Essence or Essential Oil of Petit Grain=—was originally obtained by subjecting little immature oranges to distillation (Pomet—1692); but it is now produced, and to a large extent, by distillation of the leaves and shoots either of the Bigarade or Bitter Orange, or of the Portugal or Sweet Orange. The essence of the former is by far the more fragrant, and commands double the price. Poiteau and Risso[500] state that the leaves of the Brigaradier with bitter fruit are by far the richest in essential oil among all the allied leaves; they are obtained in the lemon-growing districts of the Mediterranean where the essence is manufactured. Lemon-trees being mostly grafted on orange-stocks, the latter during the summer put forth shoots, which are allowed to grow till they are often some feet in length. The cultivator then cuts them off, binds them in bundles, and conveys them to the distiller of Petit Grain. The strongest shoots are frequently reserved for walking-sticks. The leaves of the two sorts of orange are easily distinguished by their smell when crushed. Essence of Petit Grain, which in odour has a certain resemblance to Neroli, is used in perfumery and especially in the manufacture of Eau de Cologne.

According to Gladstone (1864) it consists mainly of a hydrocarbon probably identical with that from oil of Neroli.

=Essential Oil of Orange Peel=—is largely made at Messina and also in the south of France. It is extracted by the sponge-, or by the écuelle-process, and partly from the Bigarade and partly from the Sweet or Portugal Orange, the scarcely ripe fruit being in either case employed. The oil made from the former is much more valuable than that obtained from the latter, and the two are distinguished in price-currents as Essence de Bigarade and Essence de Portugal.

These essences are but little consumed in England, in liqueur-making and in perfumery. For what is known of their chemical nature, the reader can consult the works named at foot[501].

=Essence of Cedrat=—The true Citron or Cedrat tree is Citrus medica Risso, and is of interest as being the only member of the Orange tribe the fruit of which was known in ancient Rome. The tree itself, which appears to have been cultivated in Palestine in the time of Josephus, was introduced into Italy in about the 3rd century. In A.D. 1003 it was much grown at Salerno near Naples, whence its fruits were sent as presents to the Norman princes[502].

[500] Loc. c., edition of 1873. 211.

[501] Gmelin, Chemistry, xiv. (1860) 305. 306: Gladstone, Journ. of Chem. Soc. xvii. (1864) 1: Wright (and Piesse) in Yearbook of Pharmacy, 1871. 546; 1873. 518; Journ. of Chem. Soc. xi. (1873) 552, &c. We may moreover point out the existence of a crystallized constituent of the oil of orange peel from the island of Curaçao. It was noticed as long ago as the year 1771 by Gaubius: “Sal aromaticus, nativus, ex oleo corticum mali aurei Curassavici,” in his book, “Adersariorum varii argumenti, lib. unus.” Leidae, 1771. 27.

[502] Gallesio, Traité du Citrus, 1811. 222.

At the present day, the citron appears to be nowhere cultivated extensively, the more prolific lemon tree having generally taken its place. It is however scattered along the Western Riviera, and is also grown on a small scale about Pizzo and Paola on the western coast of Calabria, in Sicily, Corsica, and Azores. Its fruits, which often weigh several pounds, are chiefly sold for being candied. For this purpose the peel, which is excessively thick, is salted and in that state shipped to England and Holland. The fruit has a very scanty pulp[503].

Essence of Cedrat which is quoted in some price-lists may be prepared from the scarcely ripe fruit by the sponge-process; but as it is more profitable to export the fruit salted, it is very rarely manufactured, and that which bears its name is for the most part fictitious.

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FRUCTUS BELÆ

Bela; Bael Fruit, Indian Bael, Bengal Quince.

=Botanical Origin=—Ægle Marmelos[504] Correa (Cratæva Marmelos L.), a tree found in most parts of the Indian peninsula, which is often planted in the neighbourhood of temples, being esteemed sacred by the Hindus. It is truly wild in the forests of the Coromandel Ghâts and of the Western Himalaya, ascending often to 4,000 feet and growing gregarious when wild.

It attains a height of 30-40 feet, is usually armed with strong sharp thorns and has trifid leaves, the central leaflet being petiolate and larger than the lateral. The fruit is a large berry, 2 to 4 inches in diameter, variable in shape, being spherical or somewhat flattened like an orange, ovoid, or pyriform[505], having a smooth hard shell; the interior divided into 10-15 cells each containing several woolly seeds, consists of a mucilaginous pulp, which becomes very hard in drying. In the fresh state the fruit is very aromatic, and the juicy pulp which it contains has an agreeable flavour, so that when mixed with water and sweetened, it forms a palatable refrigerant drink. The fruit is never eaten as dessert, though its pulp is sometimes made into a preserve with sugar.

The fruit of the wild tree is described as small, hard, and flavourless, remaining long on the tree. The bark of the stem and root, the flowers and the expressed juice of the leaves are used in medicine by the natives of India.

=History=—The tree under the name of Bilva[506] is constantly alluded to as an emblem of increase and fertility in ancient Sanskrit poems, some of which as the Yajar Veda are supposed to have been written not later than 1000 B.C.—Constantinus Africanus was acquainted with the fruit under notice.

[503] Oribasius accurately describes the citron as a fruit consisting of three parts, namely a central acid pulp, a thick and fleshy zest and an aromatic outer coat.—Medicinalia collecta, lib. i. c. 64.

[504] Ægle, one of the Hesperides.—Marmeloes from the Portuguese marmelo, a quince.—Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, part 11.

[505] In the Botanical Garden of Buitenzorg in Java, three varieties are grown, namely—fructibus oblongis, fructibus subglobosis, and macrocarpa.

[506] We are indebted to Professor Monier Williams of Oxford for pointing out to us many references to Bilva in the Sanskrit writings.

Garcia de Orta, who resided in India as physician to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa in the 16th century, wrote an account of the fruit under the name of Marmelos de Benguala (Bengal Quince) Cirifole or Beli[507], describing its use in dysentery.

In the following century it was noticed by Bontius, in whose writings edited by Piso[508] there is a bad figure of the tree as Malum Cydonium. It was also figured by Rheede,[509] and subsequently under the designation of Bilack or Bilack tellor by Rumphius.[510] The latter states that it is indigenous to Gujarat, the eastern parts of Java, Sumbawa and Celebes, and that it has been introduced into Amboina.

But although Ægle Marmelos has thus been long known and appreciated in India, the use of its fruit as a medicine attracted no attention in Europe till about the year 1850. The dried fruit which has a place in the British Pharmacopœia is now not unfrequently imported.

=Description=—We have already described the form and structure of the fruit, which for medicinal use should be dried when in a half ripe state. It is found in commerce in dried slices having on the outer side a smooth greyish shell enclosing a hard, orange or red, gummy pulp in which are some of the 10 to 15 cells existing in the entire fruit. Each cell includes 6 to 10 compressed oblong seeds nearly 3 lines in length, covered with whitish woolly hairs. When broken the pulp is seen to be nearly colourless internally, the outside alone having assumed an orange tint. The dried pulp has a mucilaginous, slightly acid taste, without aroma, astringency, or sweetness.

There is also imported Bael fruit which has been collected when ripe, as shown by the well-formed seeds. Such fruits arrive broken irregularly and dried, or sawn into transverse slices and then dried, or lastly entire, in which case they retain some of their original fragrance resembling that of elemi.

=Microscopic Structure=—The rind of the fruit is covered with a strong cuticle, and further shows two layers, the one exhibiting not very numerous oil-cells, and the other an inner made up of sclerenchyme. The tissue of the pulp, which, treated with water, swells into an elastic mass, consists of large cells with considerable cavities between them. The seeds when moistened yield an abundance of mucilage nearly in the same way as White Mustard or Linseed. In the epidermis of the seeds certain groups of cells are excessively lengthened, and thus constitute the curious woolly hairs already noticed. They likewise afford mucilage in the same way as the seed itself.

=Chemical Composition=—We are unable to confirm the remarkable analyses of the drug alluded to in the Pharmacopœia of India;[511] nor can we explain by any chemical examination upon what constituent the alleged medicinal efficacy of bael depends.

[507] Sirí-phal and Bel are Hindustani names.—See also Flückiger, Documente, 29.

[508] De Indiæ re nat. et med. 1658, lib. vi. c. 8.

[509] Hort. Malab. iii. (1682) tab. 37 (Covalam).

[510] Herb. Amb. i. tab. 81.

[511] Edition 1868, pp. 46 and 441.

The pulp moistened with cold water yields a red liquid containing chiefly mucilage, and (probably) pectin which separates if the liquid is concentrated by evaporation. The mucilage may be precipitated by neutral acetate of lead or by alcohol, but is not coloured by iodine. It may be separated by a filter into a portion truly soluble (as proved by the addition of alcohol or acetate of lead), and another, comprehending the larger bulk, which is only swollen like tragacanth, but is far more glutinous and completely transparent.

Neither a per-nor a proto-salt of iron shows the infusion to contain any appreciable quantity of tannin,[512] nor is the drug in any sense possessed of astringent properties.

=Uses=—Bael is held in high repute in India as a remedy for dysentery and diarrhœa; at the same time it is said to act as a laxative where constipation exists.

=Adulteration=—The fruit of Feronia Elephantum Correa, which has a considerable external resemblance to that of Ægle Marmelos and is called by Europeans Wood Apple, is sometimes supplied in India for bael. It may be easily distinguished: it is one-celled with a large five-lobed cavity (instead of 10 to 15 cells) filled with numerous seeds. The tree has pinnate leaves with 2 or 3 pairs of leaflets. We have seen Pomegranate Peel offered as Indian Bael.[513]

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SIMARUBEÆ

LIGNUM QUASSIÆ.

Quassia, Quassia Wood, Bitter Wood; F. Bois de Quassia de la Jamaïque, Bois amer; G. Jamaica Quassiaholz.

=Botanical Origin=—Picræna excelsa Lindl. (Quassia excelsa Swartz, Simaruba excelsa DC., Picrasma excelsa Planchon), a tree 50 to 60 feet in height, somewhat resembling an ash and having inconspicuous greenish flowers and black shining drupes the size of a pea. It is common on the plains and lower mountains of Jamaica, and is also found in the islands of Antigua and St. Vincent. It is called in the West Indies Bitter Wood or Bitter Ash.

=History=—Quassia wood was introduced into Europe about the middle of the last century. It was derived from Quassia amara L., a shrub or small tree with handsome crimson flowers, belonging to the same order, native of Panama, Venezuela, Guiana, and Northern Brazil. It was subsequently found that the Bitter Wood of Jamaica which Swartz and other botanists referred to the same genus, possessed similar properties, and as it was obtainable of much larger size, it has since the end of the last century been generally preferred. The wood of Q. amara, called Surinam Quassia, is however still used in France and Germany.[514]

[512] We are thus at variance with Collas of Pondichéry, who attributes to the ripe fruit 5 per cent. of tannin.—Hist. nat. etc. du Bel ou Vilva in Revue Coloniale, xvi. (1856) 220-238.

[513] 40 bags in a drug sale, 8th May, 1873.

[514] The Pharmacopœa Germanica of 1872 expressly forbids the use of the wood of Picræna in place of Quassia.

The first to give a good account of Jamaica quassia was John Lindsay,[515] a medical practitioner of the island, who writing in 1791 described the tree as long known not only for its excellent timber, but also as a useful medicine in putrid fevers and fluxes. He adds that the bark is exported to England in considerable quantity—“for the purposes of the brewers of ale and porter.”

Quassia, defined as the wood, bark, and root of Q. amara L., was introduced into the London Pharmacopœia of 1788; in the edition of 1809, it was superseded by the wood of Picræna excelsa. In the stock-book of a London druggist (J. Gurney Bevan, of Plough Court, Lombard Street) we find it first noticed in 1781 (as rasuræ), when it was reckoned as having cost 4_s._ 2_d._ per lb.

=Description=—The quassia wood of commerce consists of pieces of the stem and larger branches, some feet in length, and often as thick as a man’s thigh. It is covered with bark externally of a dusky grey or blackish hue, white and fibrous within, which it is customary to strip off and reject. The wood, which is of a very light yellowish tint, is tough and strong, but splits easily. In transverse section it exhibits numerous fine close medullary rays, which intersect the rather obscure and irregular rings resembling those of annual growth of our indigenous woody stems. The centre is occupied by a cylinder of pith of minute size. In a longitudinal section, whether tangential or radial, the wood appears transversely striated by reason of the small vertical height of the medullary rays.

The wood often exhibits certain blackish markings due to the mycelium of a fungus; they have sometimes the aspect of delicate patterns, and at others appear as large dark patches.

Quassia has a strong, pure bitter taste, but is devoid of odour. It is always supplied to the retail druggist in the form of turnings or raspings, the former being obtained in the manufacture of the Bitter Cups, now often seen in the shops.

=Microscopic Structure=—The wood consists for the most part of elongated pointed cells (libriform), traversed by medullary rays, each of the latter being built up of about 15 vertical layers of cells. The single layers contain from one to three rows of cells. The ligneous rays thus enclosed by medullary parenchyme, are intersected by groups of tissue constituting the above-mentioned irregular rings. On a longitudinal section this parenchyme exhibits numerous crystals of oxalate of calcium, and sometimes deposits of yellow resin. The latter is more abundant in the large vessels of the wood. Oxalate and resin are the only solid matters perceptible in the tissues of this drug.

=Chemical Composition=—The bitter taste of quassia is due to Quassiin, which was first obtained, no doubt, from the wood of Quassia amara, by Winckler in 1835. It was analysed by Wiggers,[516] who assigned it the formula C₁₀H₁₂O₃, now regarded as doubtful. According to the latter, quassiin is an irresolvable, neutral substance, crystallizable from dilute alcohol or from chloroform. It requires for solution about 200 parts of water, but is not soluble in ether; it forms an insoluble compound with tannic acid. Quassia wood is said to yield about ⅒ per cent. of quassiin. A watery infusion of quassia, especially if a little caustic lime has been added to the drug, displays a slight fluorescence, due apparently to quassiin. Goldschmiedt and Weidel (1877) failed in obtaining quassiin. They isolated the yellow resin which we mentioned above, and stated that it yields protocatechuic acid when melted with potash. Quassia wood dried at 100° C. yielded us 7·8 per cent. of ash.

[515] Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, iii. (1794) 205. tab. 6.

[516] Liebig’s Annalen der Pharm. xxi. (1837) 40.

=Commerce=—The quantity of Bitter Wood shipped from Jamaica in 1871 was 56 tons.[517]

=Uses=—The drug is employed as a stomachic and tonic. It is poisonous to flies, and is not without narcotic properties in respect to the higher animals.

=Substitutes=—The wood of Quassia amara L., the Bitter Wood of Surinam, bears a close resemblance, both external and structural, to the drug just noticed; but its stems never exceed four inches in diameter and are commonly still thinner. Their thin, brittle bark is of a greyish yellow, and separates easily from the wood. The latter is somewhat denser than the quassia of Jamaica, from which it may be distinguished by its medullary rays being composed of a single or less frequently of a double row of cells, whereas in the wood of Picræna excelsa, they consist of two or three rows, less frequently of only one.

Surinam Quassia Wood is exported from the Dutch colony of Surinam. The quantity shipped thence during the nine months ending 30th Sept, 1872, was 264,675 lb.[518]

The bark of Samadera indica Gärtn., a tree of the same natural order, owes its bitterness to a principle[519] which agrees perhaps with quassiin. The aqueous infusion of the bark is abundantly precipitated by tannic acid, a compound of quassiin probably being formed. A similar treatment applied to quassia would possibly easier afford quassiin than the extraction of the wood by means of alcohol, as performed by Wiggers.

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BURSERACEÆ

OLIBANUM.

Gummmi-resina Olibanum, Thus masculum[520]; Olibanum, Frankincense; F. Encens; G. Weihrauch.

[517] Blue Book, Island of Jamaica, for 1871.

[518] Consular Reports, No. 3, presented to Parliament, July 1873.

[519] Rost van Tonningen, Jahresbericht of Wiggers (Canstatt) for 1858. 75; Pharm. Journ. ii. (1872) 644. 654.

[520] The λίβανος of the Greeks, the Latin Olibanum, as well as the Arabic Lubân, and the analogous sounds in other languages, are all derived from the Hebrew Lebonah, signifying milk: and modern travellers who have seen the frankincense trees state that the fresh juice is milky, and hardens when exposed to the air. The word Thus, on the other hand, seems to be derived from the verb θύειν, to sacrifice.

=Botanical Origin=—Olibanum is obtained from the stem of several species of Boswellia, inhabiting the hot and arid regions of Eastern Africa, near Cape Gardafui and of the southern coast of Arabia. Notwithstanding the recent elaborate and valuable researches of Birdwood,[521] the olibanum trees are still but imperfectly known, as will be evident in the following enumeration:—

1. Boswellia Carterii Birdw.—This includes the three following forms, which may be varieties of a single species, or may belong to two or more species,—a point impossible to settle until more perfect materials shall have been obtained.

a. Boswellia No. 5, Oliver, Flora of Tropical Africa, I. (1868) 324, Mohr meddu or Mohr madow of the natives; meddu, according to Playfair and Hildebrandt, means black. The leaflets are crenate, undulate, and pubescent on both sides.

This tree is found in the Somali Country, growing a little inland in the valleys and on the lower part of the hills, never on the range close to the sea. It yields the olibanum called Lubân Bedowi or Lubân Sheheri (Playfair).

Hildebrandt describes the Mohr meddu as a tree 12 to 15 feet high, with a few branches, indigenous to the limestone range of Ahl or Serrut, in the northern part of the Somali Country, where it occurs in elevations of from 3000 to 5000 feet. To this tree belongs the figure 58 in Bentley and Trimen’s Medicinal Plants (Part 20, 1877).

b. Boswellia No. 6, Oliver, op. cit., Birdwood, Linn. Trans. xxvii., tab. 29.—Sent by Playfair among the specimens of the preceding, and with the same indications and native name. This form, the “Mohr meddu” of the Somalis, has obscurely serrulate or almost entire leaflets, velvety and paler below, glabrous above. The figure (which is not given in the reprint) is very much the same as that of the following.

c. Maghrayt d’sheehaz of the Maharas, Birdwood, l. c. tab. 30, reprinted in Cooke’s report, plate I; Carter, Journ. of Bombay Branch of R. Asiat. Soc. ii., tab. 23; B. sacra Flückiger, Lehrbuch der Pharmakognosie des Pflanzenreiches, 1867. 31.—Ras Fartak, S.E. coast of Arabia, growing in the detritus of limestone cliffs and close to the shore,[522] also near the village of Merbat (Carter, 1844-1846).

Birdwood’s figure refers to a specimen propagated in the Victoria Gardens, Bombay, from cuttings sent there from the Somali country by Playfair.

2. B. Bhau-Dajiana Birdw. l. c. tab. 31, or plate III. of the reprint.—Somali Country (Playfair); cultivated in Victoria Gardens, Bombay, where it flowered in 1868. The differences between this species and B. Carterii are not very obvious.

[521] On the Genus Boswellia, with descriptions and figures of three new species.—Linn. Trans. xxvii. (1870) 111. 148. This paper is reprinted as an appendix to Cooke’s “Report on the gums, resins, ... of the Indian Museum,” Lond. 1874.—The original plates are much superior and more complete than the reprints.—The materials on which Dr. Birdwood’s observations have been chiefly founded, and to which we also have had access, are,—1. Specimens collected during an expedition to the Somali Coast made by Col. Playfair in 1862.—2. Growing Plants at Bombay and Aden, raised from cuttings sent by Playfair.—3. A specimen obtained by H. J. Carter in 1846, near Ras Fartak, on the south-east coast of Arabia, and still growing in Victoria Gardens, Bombay; and figured by Carter in Journ. of Bombay Branch of R. Asiatic Soc. ii. (1848) 380, tab. 23.

[522] In the λιβανωτοϕόρος χώρα of the antiquity, the hill region (where Mohr meddu is growing) used to be contrasted with the coast region, the Sahil. See Sprenger (quoted further on, page 136, footnote 3), page 90.

3. Boswellia No. 4, Oliver, op. cit.—Bunder Murayah, Somali Country (Playfair). Grows out of the rock, but sometimes in the detritus of limestone; never found on the hills close to the sea, but further inland and on the highest ground. Yields Lubân Bedowi and L. Sheheri; was received at Kew as Mohr add, a name applied by Birdwood also to B. Bhau-Dajiana.

From the informations due to Captains Miles[523] and Hunter and to Haggenmacher[524] it would appear that the Beyo or Beyu of the Somalis (Boido, Capt. Hunter) is agreeing with this tree.

4. Boswellia neglecta, S. Le M. Moore, in Journ. of Botany, xv.(1877) 67 and tab. 185. This tree has been collected by Hildebrandt in the limestone range, Ahl or Serrut, in the northern part of the Somali Country. It occurs in elevations of 1000 to 1800 metres, and attains a height of 5 to 6 metres. Its exudation, according to Hildebrandt, is collected in but small quantity and mixed with the other kinds of olibanum. Moore gives Murlo as the vernacular name of this tree, Hildebrandt calls it Mohr add.

In addition to the foregoing, from which the olibanum of commerce is collected, it may be convenient to mention also the following:—

1. Boswellia Frereana Birdw., a well-marked and very distinct species of the Somali Country, which the natives call Yegaar. It abounds in a highly fragrant resin collected and sold as Lubân Meyeti or Lubân Mati, which we regard to be the substance originally known as Elemi (see this article).

2. B. papyrifera Richard (Plösslea floribunda Endl.), the “Makar” of Sennaar and the mountainous region ascending to 4000 feet above the level of the sea on the Abyssinian rivers Takazze and Mareb. It appears not to grow in the outer parts of north-eastern Africa. Its resin is not collected, and stated by Richard[525] to be transparent; it consists no doubt merely of resin (and essential oil?) without gum.[526]

3. B. thurifera Colebr. (B. glabra et B. serrata Roxb.), the Salai tree of India, produces a soft odoriferous resin which is used in the country as incense but is not the olibanum of commerce. The tree is particularly abundant on the trap hills of the Dekhan and Satpura range. Berg, in “Offizinelle Gewächse,” xiv. c. gives a good figure of this species.

=History=—The use of olibanum goes back to a period of extreme antiquity, as proved by the numerous references[527] in the writings of the Bible to incense, of which it was an essential ingredient. It is moreover well known that many centuries before Christ, the drug was one of the most important objects of the traffic which the Phœnicians[528] and Egyptians carried on with Arabia.

[523] See his picturesque description of the tree, Journ. R. Geograph. Soc. 22 (1872) 64.

[524] Flückiger, Pharm. Journ. viii. (1878) 805.

[525] Tent. Floræ Abyssinicae, i. (1847) 248; figure of the tree tab. xxxiii.

[526] See the paper quoted in note 2.

[527] As for instance, Exod. xxx. 34; I Chron. x. 29; Matth. ii. 11.

[528] Movers, Das phönizische Alterthum, iii. (1856) 99. 299.—Sprenger, l. c. p. 299, also points out the importance of the olibanum with regard to the commercial relations of those early periods.

Professor Dümichen[529] of Strassburg has discovered at the temple of Dayr el Báhri in Upper Egypt, paintings illustrating the traffic carried on between Egypt and a distant country called Punt or Pount as early as the 17th century B.C. In these paintings there are representations not only of bags of olibanum, but also of olibanum trees planted in tubs or boxes, being conveyed by ship from Arabia to Egypt. Inscriptions on the same building, deciphered by Professor D., describe with the utmost admiration the shipments of precious woods, heaps of incense, verdant incense trees,[530] ivory, gold, stimmi (sulphide of antimony), silver, apes, besides other productions not yet identified. The country Pount was first thought to be southern Arabia, but is now considered to comprehend the Somali coast, together with a portion of the opposite Arabian coast. Punt possibly refers to “Opone,” an old name for Hafoon, a place south of Cape Gardafui.

A detailed account of frankincense is given by Theophrastus[531] (B.C. 370-285) who relates that the commodity is produced in the country of the Sabæans, one of the most active trading nations of antiquity, occupying the southern shores of Arabia. It appears from Diodorus that the Sabæans sold their frankincense to the Arabs, through whose hands it passed to the Phœnicians who disseminated the use of it in the temples throughout their possessions, as well as among the nations with whom they traded. The route of the caravans from south-eastern Arabia to Gaza in Palestine, has recently (1866) been pointed out by Professor Sprenger. Plutarch relates that when Alexander the Great captured Gaza, 500 talents of olibanum and 100 talents of myrrh were taken, and sent thence to Macedonia.

The libanotophorous region of the old Sabæans is in fact the very country visited by Carter in 1844 and 1846, and lying as he states on the south coast of Arabia between long. 52° 47′ and 52° 23′ east.[532] It was also known to the ancients, at least to Strabo and Arrian, that the opposite African coast likewise produced olibanum,[533] as it is now doing almost exclusively; and the latter states that the drug is shipped partly to Egypt and partly to Barbaricon at the mouth of the Indus.

As exemplifying the great esteem in which frankincense was held by the ancients, the memorable gifts presented by the Magi to the infant Saviour will occur to every mind. A few other instances may be mentioned: Herodotus[534] relates that the Arabians paid to Darius, king of Persia, an annual tribute of 1000 talents of frankincense.

A remarkable Greek inscription, brought to light in modern times[535] on the ruins of the temple of Apollo at Miletus, records the gifts made to the shrine by Seleucus II., king of Syria (B.C. 246-227), and his brother Antiochus Hierax, king of Cilicia, which included in addition two vessels of gold and silver, ten talents of frankincense (λιβανωτοός) and one of myrrh.

[529] Dümichen (Johannes), The fleet of an Egyptian Queen from the 17th century before our era, and ancient Egyptian military parade, represented on a monument of the same age ... after a copy taken from the terrace of the temple of Dêr-el-Baheri, translated from the German by Anna Dümichen, Leipzig, 1868.—See also Mariette-Bey, Deir-el-Bahari, Leipzig, 1877, Pl. 6, 7, 8.

[530] In one of the inscriptions they are referred to in terms which Professor D. has thus rendered:—“Thirty-one verdant incense trees brought among the precious things from the land of Punt for the majesty of this god Amon, the lord of the terrestrial thrones. Never has anything similar been seen since the foundation of the world.”

[531] Hist. Plant. lib. iv. c. 7.—See also Sprenger, l.c. 219.

[532] See also Sprenger, Die alte Geographie Arabiens. Bern, 1875. 296, 302, also 244.

[533] “Thus transfretanum,” Sprenger, 299.

[534] Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. (1858) 488.—Sprenger, l. c. 300, alludes to olibanum being exported to Babylonia and Persia.

[535] Chishull, Antiquitates Asiaticæ, Lond. 1758. 65-72.

The emperor Constantine made numerous offerings to the church under St. Silvester, bishop of Rome A.D. 314-335, of costly vessels and fragrant drugs and spices,[536] among which mention is made in several instances of Aromata and Aromata in incensum, terms under which olibanum is to be understood.[537]

With regard to the consumption of olibanum in other countries, it is an interesting fact that the Arabs in their intercourse with the Chinese, which is known to have existed as early as the 1Oth century, carried with them olibanum, myrrh, dragon’s blood, and liquid storax,[538] drugs which are still imported from the west into China. The first-named is called Ju-siang, i.e. milk perfume, a curious allusion to its Arabic name Lubân signifying milk. In the year 1872, Shanghai imported[539] of this drug no less than 1,360 peculs (181,333 lb.).

=Collection=—The fragrant gum-resin is distributed through the leaves and bark of the trees, and even exudes as a milky juice also from the flowers; its fragrance is stated to be already appreciable in a certain distance. Cruttenden,[540] who visited the Somali Country in 1843, thus describes the collecting of olibanum by the Mijjertheyn tribe, whose chief port is Bunder Murayah (lat. 11° 43′ N.)[541]:—

“During the hot season the men and boys are daily employed in collecting gums, which process is carried on as follows:—About the end of February or beginning of March, the Bedouins visit all the trees in succession and make a deep incision in each, peeling off a narrow strip of bark for about 5 inches below the wound. This is left for a month when a fresh incision is made in the same place, but deeper. A third month elapses and the operation is again repeated, after which the gum is supposed to have attained a proper degree of consistency. The mountain sides are immediately covered with parties of men and boys, who scrape off the large clear globules into a basket, whilst the inferior quality that has run down the tree is packed separately. The gum when first taken from the tree is very soft, but hardens quickly.... Every fortnight the mountains are visited in this manner, the trees producing larger quantities as the season advances, until the middle of September, when the first shower of rain puts a close to the gathering that year.”

The informations due to J. M. Hildebrandt, who visited the Somali in 1875, are in accordance with Cruttenden’s statements. The former says, that the latest crops are greatly injured by the rains, the drug being partly dissolved by the water.

[536] These remarkable gifts are enumerated by Vignoli in his Liber Pontificalis, Rome, 1724-55, and include beside Olibanum, Oleum nardinum, Oleum Cyprium, Balsam, Storax Isaurica, Stacte, Aromata cassiæ, Saffron and Pepper.

[537] The ancient name of Cape Gardafui was Promontorium Aromatum.

[538] Bretschneider, Ancient Chinese, &c. Lond. 1871. 19.

[539] Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1872, p. 4.

[540] Trans. Bombay Geograph. Soc. vii. (1846) 121.

[541] See sketch of the Somali coast. Pharm. Journ. viii. (13 Apr. 1878) 806.

Carter[542] describing the collection of the drug in southern Arabia, writes thus:—“The gum is procured by making longitudinal incisions through the bark in the months of May and December, when the cuticle glistens with intumescence from the distended state of the parts beneath; the operation is simple, and requires no skill on the part of the operator. On its first appearance the gum comes forth white as milk, and according to its degree of fluidity, finds its way to the ground, or concretes on the branch near the place from which it first issued, from whence it is collected by men and boys employed to look after the trees by the different families who possess the land in which they grow.” According to Captain Miles,[543] the drug is not collected by the people of the country, but by Somalis who cross in numbers from the opposite coast, paying the Arab tribes for the privilege. The Arabian Lubân, he says, is considered inferior to the African.

It would even appear that the collection of the drug has ceased in Arabia, and that the names of Lubân Maheri or Mascati or Sheehaz, referring to the coast of Arabia between Ras Fartak (52° 10′ E.) and Ras Morbas (54° 34′) are now applied to the olibanum brought there from the opposite African coast.[544] Hildebrandt informed one of us (letter dated 26th Dec., 1878) that he has ascertained at Aden, that all the frankincense imported in Aden comes from Africa.

=Description=—Olibanum as found in commerce varies rather considerably in quality and appearance. It may in general terms be described as a dry gum-resin, consisting of detached tears up to an inch in length, of globular, pear-shaped, clavate, or stalactitic form, mixed with more or less irregular lumps of the same size. Some of the longer tears are slightly agglutinated, but most are distinct. The predominant forms are rounded,—angular fragments being less frequent, though the tears are not seldom fissured. Small pieces of the translucent brown papery bark are often found adhering to the flat pieces. The “Lubân Fasous Bedow” as exported from the Mijjertheyn district, in the eastern part of the Somali Country, is in very fine large tears.

The colour of the drug is pale yellowish or brownish, but the finer qualities consist of tears which are nearly colourless or have a greenish hue. The smallest grains only are transparent, the rest are translucent and somewhat milky, and not transparent even after the removal of the white dust with which they are always covered. But if heated to about 94° C., they become almost transparent. When broken they exhibit a rather dull and waxy surface. Examined under the polarizing microscope no trace of crystallization is observable.

Olibanum softens in the mouth; its taste is terebinthinous and slightly bitter, but by no means disagreeable. Its odour is pleasantly aromatic, but is only fully developed when the gum-resin is exposed to an elevated temperature. At 100° C. the latter softens without actually fusing, and if the heat be further raised decomposition begins.

[542] See my paper on Luban Mati and Olibanum, Pharm. Journ. viii. (1878) 805, also Hildebrandt’s note in the “Sitzungs-Bericht der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin,” 19th Nov. 1878, 195.—F. A. F..

[543] Loc. cit.

[544] On the neighbourhood of Bunder Murayah, in Journ. of R. Geograph. Society, xxii. (1872) 65.

=Chemical Composition=—Cold water quickly changes olibanum into a soft whitish pulp, which when rubbed down in a mortar forms an emulsion. Immersed in spirit of wine, a tear of olibanum is not altered much in form, but it becomes of an almost pure opaque white. In the first case the water dissolves the gum, while in the second the alcohol removes the resin. We find that pure olibanum treated with spirit of wine leaves 27 to 35 of gum,[545] which forms a thick mucilage with three parts of water. Dissolved in 5 parts of water it yields a neutral solution, which is precipitated by perchloride of iron as well as by silicate of sodium, but not by neutral acetate of lead. It is consequently a gum of the same class as gum arabic, if not identical with it. Its solution contains the same amount of lime as gum arabic affords.

The resin of olibanum has been examined by Hlasiwetz (1867), according to whom it is a uniform substance having the composition C₂₀H₃₀O₃. We find that it is not soluble in alkalis, nor have we succeeded in converting it into a crystalline body by the action of dilute alcohol. It is not uniformly distributed throughout the tears; if they are broken after having been acted upon by dilute alcohol, it now and then happens that a clear stratification is perceptible, showing a concentric arrangement.

Olibanum contains an essential oil, of which Braconnot (1808) obtained 5 per cent., Stenhouse (1840) 4 per cent., and Kurbatow (1871-1874) 7 per cent. According to Stenhouse it has a sp. gr. of 0·866, a boiling point of 179·4° C., and an odour resembling that of turpentine but more agreeable. Kurbatow separated this oil into two portions, the one of which has the formula C₁₀H₁₆, boils at 158° C., and combines with HCl to form crystals; the other contains oxygen. The bitter principle of olibanum forms an amorphous brown mass.

The resin of olibanum submitted to destructive distillation affords no umbelliferone. Heated with strong nitric acid it develops no peculiar colour, but at length camphretic acid (see Camphor) is formed, which may be also obtained from many resins and essential oils if submitted to the same oxidizing agent.

=Commerce=—The olibanum of Arabia is shipped from several small places along the coast between Damkote and Al Kammar, but the quantity produced in this district is much below that furnished by the Somali Country in Eastern Africa. The latter is brought to Zeyla, Berbera, Bunder Murayah, and many smaller ports, whence it is shipped to Aden or direct to Bombay. The trade is chiefly in the hands of Banians, and the great emporium for the drug is Bombay. A certain portion is shipped through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to Jidda,—Von Kremer[546] says to the value of £12,000 annually. The quantity exported from Bombay in the year 1872-73 was 25,100 cwt., of which 17,446 cwt. were shipped to the United Kingdom, and 6,184 cwt. to China.[547]

=Uses=—As a medicine olibanum is nearly obsolete, at least in Britain. The great consumption of the drug is for the incense used in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches.

[545] I obtained 32·14 per cent. from the finest tears of the kind called Fasous Bedowi, with which I was presented by Capt. Hunter of Aden.—F. A. F..

[546] Aegypten, Forschungen über Land und Volk, Leipzig, 1863.

[547] Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the Presidency of Bombay for 1872-73, pt. ii. 78.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

MYRRHA

Gummi-resina Myrrha; Myrrh; F. Myrrhe; G. Myrrhe.

=Botanical Origin=—Ehrenberg who visited Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, and Arabia in the years 1820-26, brought home with him specimens of the myrrh trees found at Ghizan (Gison or Dhizân), a town on the strip of coast-region called Tihâma, opposite the islands of Farsan Kebir and Farsan Seghir, and a little to the north of Lohaia, on the eastern side of the Red Sea, in latitude 16° 40′, and also on the neighbouring mountains of Djara (or Shahra) and Kara. Here the myrrh trees form the underwood of the forests of Acacia, Moringa, and Euphorbia. Nees von Esenbeck who examined these specimens, drew up from them a description of what he called Balsamodendron Myrrha, which he figured in 1828.[548]

After Ehrenberg’s herbarium had been incorporated in the Royal Herbarium of Berlin, Berg examined these specimens, and came to the conclusion that they consist of two species, namely that described and figured by Nees, and a second to which was attached (correctly we must hope) two memoranda bearing the following words:—“Ipsa Myrrhæ arbor ad Gison,—Martio,” and “Ex huic simillima arbore ad Gison ipse Myrrham effluentem legi.[549] Hæc specimina lecta sunt in montibus Djara et Kara Februario.” This plant Berg named B. Ehrenbergianum.[550] Oliver in his Flora of Tropical Africa (1868)[551] is disposed to consider Berg’s plant the same as B. Opobalsamun Kth., a tree or shrub yielding myrrh, found by Schweinfurth on the Bisharrin mountains in Abyssinia, not far from the coast between Suakin and Edineb. But Schweinfurth himself does not admit the identity of the two plants.[552] It is certain, however, that the myrrh of commerce is chiefly of African origin.

Captain F. M. Hunter, Assistant Resident of Aden, informed us[553] that the Arabian myrrh tree, the Didthin, is found not only in the southern provinces of Arabia, Yemen, and Hadramant, probably also in the southern part of Oman, but likewise on the range of hills which, on the African shore, runs parallel to the Somali coast. The Somalis who gather the myrrh in Arabia allege that the Arabian “Didthin” is identical with that of their own district. Its exudation is the true myrrh, “Mulmul” of the Somalis, the “Mur” of the Arabs, or “Heerabole”[554] of the Indians.

[548] Plantæ Medicinales, Düsseldorf, ii. (1828) tab. 355.

[549] On applying in 1872 to Prof. Ehrenberg to know if it were possible that we could see this very specimen, we received the answer that it could not be found.

[550] Berg u. Schmidt, _Darstellung u. Beschreibung ... offizin. Gewächse_, iv. (1863) tab. xxix. d.; also Bot. Zeitung, 16 Mai, 1862. 155.

[551] Vol. i. 326.

[552] Petermann, Geogr. Mittheilungen, 1868. 127.

[553] Letters addressed in 1877 to F. A. F..

[554] Bola, Bal, or Bol were names of the myrrh in the Egyptian antiquity.—Ehrenberg, De Myrrhæ et Opocalpasi ... detectis plantis, Berolini, 1841, fol.

Another myrrh tree, according to Captain Hunter, is growing in Ogadain and the districts round Harrar, that is between the 7th and 10th parallels, N. lat., and 43° to 50° E. long. This is the “Habaghadi” of the Somalis, which is not found in Arabia, nor in the coast range of the Somali country, but only at a considerable distance from the sea-shore. Its exudation is the coarse myrrh, habaghadi of the Somalis and Arabs and “Baisabole” of the Indians.

Hildebrandt has collected the didthin, or didin as he writes, in the coast range alluded to, that is in the Ahl or Serrut Mountains, where the tree is growing on sunny slopes in elevations of 500 to 1,500 metres. He has ascertained that it is identical with Ehrenberg’s tree, Balsamodendron Myrrha Nees. It is a low tree of crippled appearance, attaining not more than 3 metres. This species must therefore be pointed out as the source of true myrrh of the European commerce.

=History=—(See also further on, Bissabol). Myrrh has been used from the earliest times together with olibanum as a constituent of incense,[555] perfumes, and unguents. It was an ingredient of the holy oil used in the Jewish ceremonial as laid down by Moses: and it was also one of the numerous components of the celebrated Kyphi of the Egyptians, a preparation used in fumigations, medicine, and the process of embalming, and of which there were several varieties.

In the previous article we have pointed out (p. 137) several early references to myrrh in connection with olibanum, in which it is observable that the myrrh (when weights are mentioned) is always in the smaller quantity. Of the use of the drug in mediæval Europe there are few notices, but they tend to show that the commodity was rare and precious. This myrrh is recommended in the Anglo-Saxon Leech-books[556] to be used with frankincense in the superstitious medical practice of the 11th century. In a manuscript of the Monastery of Rheinau, near Schaffhausen, Switzerland, we also find that, apparently in the 11th century, myrrh as well as olibanum were used in ordeals in the “judicium aquæ bullientis.”[557] The drug was also used by the Welsh “Physicians of Myddfai” in the 13th century. In the Wardrobe accounts of Edward I. there is an entry under date 6th January, 1299, for gold, frankincense, and myrrh, offered by the king in his chapel on that day, it being the Feast of Epiphany.[558] Myrrh again figures in the accounts of Geoffroi de Fleuri,[559] master of the wardrobe (argentier) to Philippe le Long, king of France, where record is made of the purchase of—“4 onces d’estorat calmite” (see Styrax) “et mierre (myrrh) ... encenz et laudanon,” (Ladanum, the resin of Cistus creticus L.)—for the funeral of John, posthumous son of Louis X., A.D. 1316.

Gold, silver, silk, precious stones, pearls, camphor, musk, myrrh, and spices are enumerated[560] as the presents which the Khan of Cathay sent to Pope Benedict XII. at Avignon about the year 1342. The myrrh destined for this circuitous route to Europe[561] was doubtless that of the Arabian traders, with whom the Chinese had constant intercourse during the middle ages. Myrrh in fact is still somewhat largely consumed in China.[562]

[555] Cantic. i 13, iii. 6; Genes. xliii. 11; Exod. ii. 12, 30, xxiii. 34-36; John xix. 39; Mark xv. 23; Proverbs vii. 17.

[556] Cockayne, Leechdoms &c. of Early England, ii. (1865) 295, 297.

[557] Range, Adjurationen, Exorcismen, Benedictionen, &c., in Mittheilungen der antiquar. Gesellschaft in Zürich, xii. (1859) 187.

[558] Liber quotidianus Contrarotulatoris Garderobæ.... Edwardi I., Lond. 1787. pp. xxxii. and 27.—The custom is still observed by the sovereigns of England, and the Queen’s oblation of gold, frankincense, and myrrh is still annually presented on the Feast of Epiphany in the Chapel Royal in London.

[559] Doüet d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Argenterie des rois de France, 1851. 19.

[560] Yule, Cathay and the way thither, ii. 357.

[561] For the costly presents in question never reached their destination, having been all plundered by the way!

[562] Shanghai imported in 1872, 18,600 lbs. of myrrh.—Reports of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1872, p. 4.

The name Myrrh is from the Hebrew and Arabic Mur, meaning bitter, whence also the Greek σμύρνα. The ancient Egyptian Bola or Bal, and the Sanskrit Vola are preserved in the Persian and Indian words Bol, Bola, and Heerabol, well-known names for myrrh.

Stacte (στακτὴ), a substance often mentioned by the ancients, is said by Pliny to be a spontaneous liquid exudation of the myrrh tree, more valuable than myrrh itself. The author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea represents it as exported from Muza in Arabia[563] together with myrrh. Theophrastus[564] speaks of myrrh as of two kinds, solid and liquid. No drug of modern times has been identified with the stacte or liquid myrrh of the ancients: that it was a substance obtainable in quantity seems evident from the fact that 150 pounds of it, said to be the offering of an Egyptian city, were presented to St. Silvester at Rome, A.D. 314-335.[565]

The myrrh of the ancients was not always obtained from Arabia. The author of the Periplus,[566] who wrote about A.D. 64, records it to have been an export of Abalites, Malao, and Mosyllon (the last named the modern Berbera), ancient ports of the African coast outside the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; and he even mentions that it is conveyed by small vessels to the opposite shores of Arabia.

=Secretion=—Marchand[567] who examined and figured the sections of a branch of three years’ growth of B. Myrrha, represents the gum-resin as chiefly deposited in the cortical layers, with a little in the medulla.

=Collection=—By the Somal tribe myrrh is largely collected as it flows out, incisions, according to Hildebrandt, being never practised. From the information given by Ehrenberg to Nees von Esenbeck,[568] it appears that myrrh when it first exudes is of an oily and then of a buttery appearance, yellowish white, gradually assuming a golden tint and becoming reddish as it hardens. It exudes from the bark like cherry-tree gum, and becomes dark and of inferior value by age. Although Ehrenberg says that the myrrh he saw was of fine quality, he does not mention it being gathered by the natives.

With regard to the localities[569] in which the drug is collected, Cruttenden,[570] who visited the Somali coast in 1843, says that myrrh is brought from the Wadi Nogâl, south west of Cape Gardafui, and from Murreyhan, Ogadain and Agahora; and that some few trees are found on the mountains behind Bunder Murayah. Major Harris[571] saw the myrrh tree in the Adel desert and in the jungle of the Háwash, on the way from Tajura to Shoa.

[563] Vincent, Commerce of the Ancients, ii. (1870) 316.—Muza or Moosa is supposed to be identical with a place still bearing that name lying about 20 miles east of Mokha.

[564] Lib. ix. c. 4.

[565] Vignolius, Liber Pontificalis, i. (1724) 95.

[566] Vincent, op. cit. ii. 127. 129. 135.

[567] Recherches sur l’Organisation des Burseracées, Paris, 1868, p. 42, pl. i.

[568] Op. cit. at p. 140, note 1.

[569] See paper with map in Ocean Highways, April, 1873, also Pharm. Journ. 19 April, 1873. 821, and Hanbury’s Science Papers, 378.

[570] Trans. Bombay Geogr. Soc. vii. (1846) 123.

[571] Highlands of Æthiopia (1844) i. 426; ii. 414.

Vaughan[572] states that the Somali Country and the neighbourhood of Hurrur (or Harar or Adari, 9° 20′ N., 42° 17′ E.) south west of Zeila are the chief producing districts. It is generally brought to the great fair of Berbera held in November, December, and January, where it is purchased by the Banians of India, and shipped for Bombay.

It appears that all these informations rather refer to the Bisabol or Habaghadi variety of myrrh; only the first notice, due to Hildebrandt, applies to true myrrh.

Myrrh trees abound on the hills about Shugra and Sureea in the territory of the Fadhli or Fudthli tribe, lying to the eastward of Aden; myrrh is collected from them by Somalis who cross from the opposite coast for the purpose and pay a tribute for the privilege to the Arabs, who appear to be scarcely acquainted with this drug.[573] But a sample of it, received by one of us from Vaughan in 1852, and others we have since seen in London (and easily, recognized), proved it to be somewhat different from typical myrrh, and it is probably afforded by another species than Balsamodendron Myrrha.

It would thus appear that there are three different trees affording myrrh, namely that just alluded to, secondly the “Habaghadi,” and thirdly that growing east of Aden.

=Description=—Myrrh consists of irregular roundish masses, varying in size from small grains up to pieces as large as an egg, and occasionally much larger. They are of an opaque reddish-brown with dusty dull surface. When broken, they exhibit a rough or waxy fracture, having a moist and unctuous appearance, especially when pressed, and a rich brown hue. The fractured, translucent surface often displays characteristic whitish marks which the ancients compared to the light mark at the base of the finger-nails. Myrrh has a peculiar and agreeable fragrance with an aromatic, bitter, and acrid taste. It cannot be finely powdered until deprived by drying of some of its essential oil and water; nor when heated does it melt like colophony.

Water disintegrates myrrh, forming a light brown emulsion, which viewed under the microscope appears made up of colourless drops, among which are granules of yellow resin. Alcohol dissolves the resin of myrrh, leaving angular non-crystalline particles of gum[574] and fragments of bark.

=Chemical Composition=—Myrrh is a mixture, in very varying proportions, of resin, mucilaginous matters, and essential oil. A fine specimen of myrrh from the Somali coast, with which Captain Hunter, in 1877, kindly presented one of us, yielded 27 per cent. of resin. The undissolved portion is partly soluble in water.

[572] Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 226.

[573] Capt. S. B. Miles, in Journ. of R. Geograph. Soc. xli. (1871) 236. The country visited by Miles and Munzinger is the “Smyrnifera regio exterior,” the outer country producing myrrh of the ancients, about 14° 10′ N. lat. and 57° E. long. See also Sprenger, Alte Geographie Arabiens, 313.

[574] Druggists who prepare large quantities of Tincture of Myrrh may utilize this gum for making a common sort of mucilage.—Pharm. Journ. 10 June, 1871, 1001.

The resin dissolves completely in chloroform or alcohol, and the colour of the latter solution is but slightly darkened by perchloride of iron. It is but partially soluble in alkalis or in bisulphide of carbon. Brückner (1867) found this portion to yield 75·6 per cent. of carbon and 9·5 of hydrogen. The resin which the bisulphide refuses to dissolve, is freely soluble in ether. It contains only 57·4 per cent. of carbon. The resin of myrrh to which, when moistened with alcohol, a small quantity of concentrated nitric or hydrochloric acid is added, assumes a violet hue, but far less brilliant than that displayed by resin of galbanum when treated in a similar manner. But a most intensely violet liquid may be obtained by adding bromine to the resin dissolved in bisulphide of carbon. If the resin of myrrh as afforded by alcohol is warmed with petroleum (boiling at 70° C.), only a small amount of resin is dissolved. This liquid becomes turbid if vapours of bromine are added; a violet flocculent matter deposits, whereas the just above-mentioned solution in the bisulphide continues clear on addition of bromine.

The resin of myrrh is not capable of affording umbelliferone like that of galbanum. By melting it with potash, pyrocatechin and protocatechuic acid are produced in small amount.

Myrrh yields on distillation a volatile oil which in operating on 25 lb. of the drug, we obtained to the extent of ¾ per cent.[575] It is a yellowish, rather viscid liquid, neutral to litmus, having a powerful odour of myrrh and sp. gr. 0·988 at 13° C.[576] In a column 50 mm. long, it deviates a ray of light 30·1° to the left. By submitting it to distillation, we obtained before the oil boiled, a few drops of a strongly acid liquid having the smell of formic acid. Neutralized with ammonia, this liquid produced in solution of mercurous nitrate a whitish precipitate which speedily darkened, thus indicating formic acid, which is developed in the oil. Old myrrh is in fact said to yield an acid distillate. The oil begins to boil at about 266° C., and chiefly distills over between 270° and 290°.

On combustion in the usual way it afforded carbon 84·70, hydrogen 9·98. Having been again rectified in a current of dry carbonic acid, it had a boiling point of 262-263° C., and now afforded[577] carbon 84·70, hydrogen 10·26, which would nearly answer to the formula C₂₂H₃₂O. The results of Ruickholdt’s analysis (1845) of essential oil of myrrh assign it the formula C₁₀H₁₄O, which is widely different from that indicated by our experiments.

The oil which we rectified displays a faintly greenish hue; it is miscible in every proportion with bisulphide of carbon, the solution exhibiting at first no peculiar coloration when a drop of nitric or sulphuric acid is added. Yet the mixture to which nitric acid (1·20) has been added, assumes after an hour or two a fine violet hue which is very persistent, enduring even if the liquid is allowed to dry up in a large capsule. If to the crude oil dissolved in bisulphide of carbon bromine be added, a violet hue is produced; and if the solution is allowed to evaporate, and the residue diluted with spirit of wine, it assumes a fine blue which disappears on addition of an alkali. The oil is not much altered by boiling with alcoholic potash, nor does it combine with alkaline bisulphites.

[575] Ruickholdt got 2·18 per cent.; Bley and Diesel (1845) from 1·6 to 3·4 per cent. of an acid oil. We are kindly informed by Mr. Fritzsche of Leipzig (Messrs. Schimmel & Co.) that good myrrh distilled on a large scale yields as much as 4·4 per cent. of oil. (Letter dated 13th June, 1878.)

[576] Gladstone (1863) found the oil a little heavier than water.

[577] Analyses performed in my laboratory by Dr. Buri, February, 1874. See also my paper on Carvol, Pharm. Journ. vii. (1876) 75, or Yearbook of Pharmacy (1877) 51—F. A. F.

The Bitter principle of myrrh is contained in the resin as extracted by alcohol. By exhausting the resin with warm water an acid brown solution is obtained, from which a dark, viscid, neutral mass separates if the liquid is concentrated; it is contaminated with a large amount of inorganic matter, from which it may be purified by means of ether. Yet the latter affords also but an amorphous, somewhat brittle brown substance, softening at 80°-90° C. This bitter principle reminds us of that mentioned in our article Elemi, page 151; it is but sparingly soluble in water; the yellowish solution is intensely bitter. The bitter principle of myrrh appears to be a glucoside. We have not succeeded in preparing it in a more satisfactory state.

=Commerce=—Myrrh is chiefly shipped by way of Berbera to Aden, and thence either to Europe or to Bombay. The exports of Aden in the fiscal year 1875 to 1876 were 1439 cwt.; one-half of which went to Bombay, one third to the United Kingdom.[578]

The bags or bales which contain the myrrh are opened in Bombay, and the drug is sorted. The better portion goes to Europe, the refuse to China, where it is probably used as an incense.[579]

=Uses=—Myrrh, though much used, does not appear to possess any very important medicinal powers, and is chiefly employed on account of its bitter, aromatic properties.

=Other Varieties of Myrrh=—Though the myrrh of commerce exhibits some diversity of appearance, the drug-brokers and druggists of London are not in the habit of applying any special designations to the different qualities. There are however two varieties which deserve notice.

1. Bissa Bol (Bhesabol, Bysabole), Habaghadi or Hebbakhade of the Somalis, formerly called East India Myrrh.[580]

This drug is of African origin, but of the plant which yields it nothing is known. Vaughan[581] who sent a sample from Aden to one of us in 1852, was told by the natives that the tree from which it is collected resembles that affording Heera Ból or true myrrh, but that it is nevertheless distinct. The drug is exported from the whole Somali coast to Mokha, Jidda, Aden, Makulla, the Persian Gulf, India and even China.[582] Bombay official returns show that the quantity imported thither in the year 1872-73, was 224 cwt, all shipped from Aden.

Some myrrh, no doubt that from the interior of north-eastern Africa, the Habaghadi or Baisabole, finds its way by the country of the Wagadain (Ugahden or Ogadain) to the small port of Brava (Barawa, Braoua), about 1° N. lat., and to Zanzibar.[583] This is, possibly, also the “Mirra fina” which is stated, about the year 1502, by Tomé Lopez to be collected (?) in the island of “Monzambiche.”[584]

[578] Information obligingly supplied by Captain Hunter, July 1877.

[579] Dymock, Pharm. Journ. vi. (1876) 661.

[580] Myrrha indica, Martiny, Encyklop. der med-pharm. Rohwaarenkunde, ii. (1854) 98, 101.

[581] Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 227.

[582] In 1865, 10 packages of this drug containing about 15 cwt. were consigned to me for sale in London by a friend in China, who had purchased the drug under the notion that it was true myrrh. The commodity was bad of its kind, and was sold with difficulty at 30_s._ per cwt.—D. H.

[583] Guillain, Documents sur l’histoire, la géogr. et le commerce de l’Afrique orientale iii. (1856) 350.

[584] In Ramusio (see Appendix, R) 239.

According to Vaughan, Bissa Bôl is mixed with the food given to milch cows and buffaloes in order to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their milk, and that it is also used as size to impart a bright gloss to whitewashed walls.

Miles mentions[585] that myrrh, called there hodthai, is only used in the Somali country, by men to whiten their shields (by means of an emulsion made with the drug), by women to cleanse their hair. Probably hodthai and habaghadi is one and the same thing.

Bissa Bôl differs from myrrh in its stronger, almost acrid taste and in odour, which, when once familiar is easily recognizable; fine specimens of the former have the outward characters of myrrh and perhaps are often passed off for it. A good sample of “coarse” habaghadi myrrh as sent in 1877 by Captain Hunter from Aden proved to contain but very little resin. This resin is manifestly different from that of myrrh as already shown by its paler, more reddish colour. The resin of Bissa Bôl moreover is but very sparingly soluble in bisulphide of carbon; this solution is not altered by bromine, that of true myrrh, as above stated, assuming a most intense violet colour on addition of bromine. Nor is the resin of habaghadi soluble in petroleum ether. Of the gummy substance, which is by far the prevailing constituent of this drug, a small portion only is soluble in water. These extremely marked differences no doubt depend upon a widely discrepant composition of the resins of the two kinds of myrrh as well as upon a different proportion of gum and resin. The Bissa Bôl usually seen is an impure and foul substance, which is regarded by London druggists as well as by the Banian traders in India as a very inferior dark sort of myrrh.

2. Arabian Myrrh—The drug we have mentioned at p. 143 as collected to the eastward of Aden, is of interest as substantiating the statement of Theophrastus that both olibanum and myrrh grow in Southern Arabia.

The drug, which is not distinguished by any special name in English trade, is in irregular masses seldom exceeding 1½ inches long, and having a somewhat gummy-looking exterior. The larger lumps seem formed by the cohesion of small, rounded, translucent, externally shining tears or drops. The fracture is like that of common myrrh, but less unctuous and wants the whitish markings. The odour and taste are those of the ordinary drug. Pieces of a semi-transparent papery bark are attached to some of the lumps. We extracted the resin of a sample of this myrrh from the territory of the Fadhli, as sent to us by Captain Hunter. Its solution in bisulphide of carbon or petroleum ether was coloured by bromine as stated above, (p. 144) with regard to typical myrrh (Heerabol) from the Somali Country. The name applies to myrrh from the vicinity of Ras Morbat in the same region. But the resin of another kind of Arabian myrrh, for which we are likewise indebted to Captain Hunter, is not coloured when treated in the same way. This is the myrrh “Hodaidia Jebeli” from north and north-western Yenen.

[585] Journ. of the R. Geogr. Soc. 22 (1872) 64.

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ELEMI

Resina Elemi; Elemi; F. Résine Elemi; G. Elemiharz.

=Botanical Origin=—The resin known in pharmacy as Elemi is derived from a tree growing in the Philippines, which Blanco,[586] a botanist of Manila, described in 1845 under the name of Icica Abilo, but which is completely unknown to the botanists of Europe. Blanco’s description is such that, if correct, the plant cannot be placed in either of the old genera Icica or Elaphrium, comprehended by Bentham and Hooker in that of Bursera, nor yet in the allied genus Canarium; in fact even the order to which it belongs is somewhat doubtful.[587]

The tree grows in the province of Batangas in the island of Luzon (south of Manila), where its name in the Tagala language is ábilo; the Spaniards call it Arbol a brea, i.e. pitch-tree, from the circumstance that its resin is used for the caulking of boats.

=History=—The explicit statements of Theophrastus in the 3rd century B.C. relative to olibanum have already been mentioned. The same writer narrates[588] that a little above Coptus on the Red Sea, no tree is found except the acacia (ἀκάνθη) of the desert ... but that on the sea there grow laurel (δάϕνη) and olive (ἐλαία), from the latter of which exudes a substance much valued to make a medicine for the staunching of blood.

This story appears again in Pliny[589] who says that in Arabia the olive tree exudes tears which are an ingredient of the medicine called by the Greeks Enhæmon, from its efficacy in healing wounds.

Dioscorides[590] briefly notices the Gum of the Ethiopian olive, which he likens to scammony; and the same substance is named by Scribonius Largus[591] who practised medicine at Rome during the 1st century.

The writers who have commented on Dioscorides have generally adopted the opinion that the exudation of the so-called olive tree of Arabia and Ethiopia was none other than the substance known to them as Elemi, though, as remarked by Mattioli,[592] the oriental drug thus called by no means well accords with the description left by that author.

[586] Flora de Filipians, segunda impression, Manila, 1845. 256.

[587] On consulting Mr. A. W. Bennett, who is now studying the Burseraceæ of India, as to the probable affinities of Blanco’s plant, we received from him the following remarks: “I have little hesitation in pronouncing that from the description, Icica Abilo cannot be a Canarium, but what it is, is more difficult to say. The leaves having the lowest pair of leaflets smallest, seems at first sight very characteristic of Canarium; but the following considerations tend the other way. 1. The opposite leaves which occur nowhere in Burseraceæ except in Amyris, with which the plant does not agree in many ways. 2. The stipellæ which are not found anywhere in the order.—3. The quinate flowers. In all species of Canarium the parts of the flowers are in threes, including C. commune, which according to Miquel extends to the Philippines. The only exception is C. (Scutinanthe Thwaites) brunneum, with which it does not agree in, other respects.

“The foregoing reasons almost equally exclude Icica (Bursera); yet the fruit of Blanco’s plant seems so eminently that of a Burseracea, that I think it must belong to that order, but with some error in the description of the leaves.”

[588] Hist. Plant, lib. iv. c. 7.

[589] Lib. xii c. 38.

[590] Lib. i. c. 141.

[591] Compositiones Medicament. cap. 103.

[592] Comm. in lib. i, Dioscoridis.

As to that name, the earliest mention of it appears in the middle of the 15th century. Thus in a list of drugs sold at Frankfort about 1450, we find Gommi Elempnij.[593] Saladinus,[594] who lived about this period, enumerates Gumi Elemi among the drugs kept by the Italian apothecaries, but we have not met with the name in any other writer of the school of Salerno. The Arbolayre,[595] a herbal supposed to have been printed about 1485, gives some account of Gomme Elempni, stating that it is the gum of the lemon tree and not of fennel as some think,—that it resembles Male Incense,—and makes an excellent ointment for wounds.

The name Enhæmon[596] of Pliny, also written Enhæmi, is probably the original form of the word Animi, another designation for the same drug, though also applied as at the present day to a sort of copal. It is even possible that the word Elemi has the same origin.[597]

This primitive Elemi is in our opinion identical with a peculiar sort of olibanum known as Luban Meyeti, afforded by Boswellia Frereana Birdwood (p. 135). It has a remarkable resemblance both in external appearance and in odour to the substance in after-times imported from America, and which were likened to the elemi and animi of the Old World. The description of “gummi elemnia” given by Valerius Cordus,[598] the most careful observer of his period, could in our opinion well apply to Luban Meyeti. (See p. 153 further on.)

The first reference to Elemi as a production of America comes from the pen of Monardes[599] who has a chapter on Animi and Copal. He describes animi as of a more oily nature than copal, of a very agreeable odour, and in grains resembling olibanum but of larger size, and adds that it differs from the animi of the Old World in being less white and clear.

At a somewhat later period this resin and some similar substances began to be substituted for Elemi which had become scarce.[600] Pomet,[601] who as a dealer in drugs was a man of practical knowledge, laments that this American drug was being sold by some as Elemi, and by others as Animi or as Tacamaca. It was however introduced in great plenty, and at length took the place of the original elemi which became completely forgotten.

American Elemi was in turn discarded in favour of another sort imported from the Philippines. The first mention of this substance is to be found among the descriptions accompanied by drawings sent by Father Camellus to Petiver of London, of the shrubs and trees of Luzon,[602] in the year 1701. Camellus states that the tree, which from his drawing preserved in the British Museum appears to us to be a species of Canarium, is very tall and large, that it is called by the Spaniards Arbol de la brea, and that it yields an abundance of odorous resin which is commonly used for pitching boats. Living specimens of the tree together with samples of the resin were brought to Paris from Manila by the traveller Perrottet about the year 1820. For the last twenty years the resin has been common, and is now imported in large quantities[603] for use in the arts, so displacing all other kinds. It has been adopted as the Elemi of the British Pharmacopœia (1867), and is in fact the only variety of elemi now found in English commerce.

[593] Flückiger, Die Frankfurter Liste, Halle, 1873. 7. 16.—“Gumi elemi” is also found in a similar list of the year 1480, compiled in the town of Nördlingen, Bavaria. See Archiv der Pharm. 211 (1877) 103.

[594] Compendium Aromatariorum, Bonon. 1488.

[595] This very rare volume is one of the treasures of the National Library of Paris.

[596] From the Greek ἔνιμον, signifying blood-stopping.

[597] Brassavola observes—“quandoque inclinavimus ut gummi oleæ Æthiopicæ esset gummi elemi dicti, quasi enhæmi.”—Examen simplicium, Lugd. 1537. 386.

[598] Hist. Stirp. libri iv., edition of Gesner, Argentorati, 1561. 209.

[599] Libro de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, Sevilla, 1565.

[600] Thus Piso in 1658 describes the resin of an Icica as exactly resembling Elemi and quite as good for wounds.—Hist. nat. et med. Ind. Occ. 122.

[601] Histoire des Drogues, 1694, 261.

[602] Ray, Hist. Plant. iii (1704), appendix, p. 67. No. 13.—Compare also p. 60, No. 10.

[603] Thus in a drug sale, May 8, 1873, there were offered 275 cases, equal to about 480 cwt.

=Description=—Manila elemi is a soft, resinous substance, of granular consistence not unlike old honey, and when recent and quite pure is colourless; more often it is found contaminated with carbonaceous matter which renders it grey or blackish, and it is besides mixed with chips and similar impurities. By exposure to the air it becomes harder and acquires a yellow tint. It has a strong and pleasant odour suggestive of fennel and lemon, yet withal somewhat terebinthinous. When moistened with spirit of wine, it disintegrates, and examined under the microscope is seen to consist partly of acicular crystals. At the heat of boiling water the hardened drug softens, and at a somewhat higher temperature fuses into a clear resin.

=Chemical Composition=—Manila elemi is rich in essential oil. On submitting 28 lb. of it to distillation with water, we obtained 2 lb. 13 oz. (equivalent to 10 per cent.) of a fragrant, colourless, neutral oil, of sp. gr. 0·861 at 15° C. Observed in Wild’s polaristrobometer we found it to be strongly dextrogyre.[604] H. Sainte Claire Deville[605] on the other hand has examined an oil of elemi that was strongly levogyre. This discrepancy shows that there are among the oils of various kinds of elemi, differences similar to those existing in the oils of turpentine and copaiba. By the action of dry hydrochloric acid gas, Deville obtained from his oil of elemi a solid crystalline substance, C₁₀H₁₆ + 2 HCl. We failed to produce any such compound from the oil of Manila elemi. Our oil of elemi dissolves in bisulphide of carbon; when mixed with concentrated sulphuric acid, it becomes thick and assumes a deep orange colour.

By submitting the crude oil to fractional distillation, we separated it into six portions, of which the first five were dextrogyre in gradually diminishing degree, while the sixth displayed a weak deviation to the left.[606] The first portion having been dissolved in four times its weight of strong sulphuric acid, washed and again distilled, exhibit a deviation to the left.[607]

[604] I observed the following deviations:—

In a column of 25 mm from 47°·5 to 70°·5 (deviation 23°). ” ” 50 ” ” 93°·6 ( ” 46·1). ” ” 100 ” ” 49°·6 (2·1 + 90 = 92°·1). —F. A. F.

[605] Comptes Rendus, xii (1841) 184.

[606] The following deviations were observed, in a column of 25 millimetres:—

Oil distilled at 1. 172°-180° C. from 47°·6 to 74°·5; deviation 26°·9 right. 2. 180°-183° ” 71°·2 ” 23°·6 ” 3. 183°-184°·5 ” 68°·8 ” 21°·2 ” 4. 184°-195° ” 65°·8 ” 18°·2 ” 5. 200°-230° ” 61°·0 ” 13°·4 ” 6. Thickish yellow ” 46°·2 ” 1°·4 left. residue

[607] From 47°·6 to 46°.

If the essential oil of elemi (8 parts) is shaken with alcohol, 0·816 sp. gr. (2 parts), nitric acid, 1·2 sp. gr. (1 part) and water (5 parts), the mixture, on exposure to air in a shallow capsule soon yields large crystals, which were found to agree crystallographically[608] perfectly with terpin, C₁₀H₂₀O₂ + OH₂ from oil of turpentine.

Maujean,[609] a French pharmacien, examined Manila elemi as long ago as 1821 and proved it to contain two resins, the one soluble in cold, the other only in hot spirit of wine. The former, which appears to constitute by far the prevailing part of all varieties of elemi, has not yet been satisfactorily examined. Bonastre[610] a little latter made a more complete analysis, showing that the less soluble resin which he obtained to the extent of 25 per cent. is easily crystallizable, and apparently identical with a substance obtainable in a similar manner from what he regarded as true elemi, which the Manila resin was not then held to be. Baup (1851) gave it the name of Amyrin. According to our experiments, it is readily isolated to the extent of 20 per cent. when Manila elemi is treated with cold spirit of wine, in which the crystals of amyrin are but slightly soluble. If the elemi is pure, the amyrin may be thus obtained (by washing with spirit and pressure between bibulous paper) in a cake of snowy whiteness, which may be further purified by crystallization from boiling alcohol. The fusing point of the crystals is 177° C.; their composition has been ascertained by Buri[611] to agree with the formula C₂₅H₄₂O, which may be written thus: (C₅H₈)₅ OH₂. Amyrin at 16° C. dissolves in 27·5 parts of alcohol 0·816 sp. gr., being readily soluble also in all the usual solvents for resins. The alcoholic solution is slightly dextrogyre. Amyrin is a neutral substance, and may be sublimed in small quantities by very carefully heating it.

By heating amyrin with zinc dust Ciamician[612] obtained chiefly toluol, methyl-ethyl-benzol and ethyl-naphtalin.

By allowing an alcoholic solution of the amorphous resin of Manila elemi[613] to evaporate, Baup obtained in very small quantity crystals of Bréine, a substance fusing at 187° C., which he considered to be distinct from amyrin. In our opinion it was impure amyrin; it is extremely difficult, or rather practically impossible to extract all the crystallizable resin from the amorphous. If the latter, perfectly transparent, is kept for several years, an elegant crystallization at last begins to make its appearance throughout the bulk of the resin.

Baup further extracted from Manila elemi a crystallizable substance soluble in water to which he gave the name of Bryoidin,[614] and in smaller quantity a second also soluble in water which he called Bréidine. From the experiments of Baup it appears that bryoidin is soluble in 360 parts of water at 10° C., and melts at 135° C.; whereas bréidine requires for solution 260 parts of water and fuses at a temperature not much over 100° C.

[608] Examined at my request by Prof. Groth.—F. A. F..

[609] Journ. de Pharm. ix. (1823) 45. 47.

[610] Id. x. (1824) 199.

[611] Pharm. Journ. vii. (1876) 157, also Yearbook of Ph. 1877. 21.

[612] Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, 1878. 1347.

[613] I am indebted for a specimen of the material that Baup worked upon and which he called Resin of Arbol a brea, to M. Roux, pharmacien of Nyon, Switzerland—F. A. F.

[614] From the Greek βρύον, in allusion to the moss-like aspect sometimes assumed by the crystals.

We have also obtained Bryoidin[615] by operating in the following manner: the watery liquid left in the still after the distillation of 28 lb. of Manila elemi was poured off from the mass of hard resin, and having been duly concentrated, it deposited together with a dark extractiform matter, colourless acicular crystals of bryoidin. The deposit in question having been drained and allowed to dry, the bryoidin may be separated by boiling water or by cold ether. We found the latter the more convenient; it readily takes up the bryoidin contaminated only with a little resin. The ethereal solution should be allowed to evaporate and the residual crystalline mass boiled in water, when the solution (which is colourless), poured off from the resin, will deposit upon cooling brilliant tufts of acicular crystals of bryoidin. The boiling in water requires to be several times repeated before the whole of the bryoidin can be removed; the latter sometimes crystallizes as a mossy arborescent growth. Bryoidin is a neutral substance, of bitter taste, scarcely soluble in cold water, but dissolving easily in boiling water, or in alcohol or ether. When a little is placed in a watch-glass, covered with a plate of glass, and then gently heated over a lamp, it sublimes in delicate needles. To obtain it perfectly pure, it is best to sublime it in a current of dry carbonic acid. Thus purified its fusing point is 133·5 C.; after fusion it concretes as a transparent, amorphous mass, which if immersed in glycerin and raised to the temperature of 135° C., suddenly crystallizes.

We have observed that if the filtered mother-liquor of bryoidin after complete cooling and standing for a day or two is warmed, it becomes turbid and that in a few minutes there separate from it long white flocks like bits of paper or wool, which do not disappear either by warming or by cooling the liquid; under the microscope they are seen to consist partly of thread-like, partly of acicular crystals. It is possible this substance is Baup’s Bréidine; we found it to fuse at 135° C., to be neutral, and to crystallize from weak alcohol exactly like bryoidin. Both it and bryoidin look very voluminous in water, but are extremely small in weight, and are present in the drug in but a very small amount. The composition of bryoidin agrees with the formula C₂₀H₃₈O₃, which might be written thus (C₅H₈)₄+3OH₂. But it contains no water of crystallization. In the vapour of dry hydrochloric gas, bryoidin assumes a fine red colour, turning violet, then blue, and lastly green. This behaviour is not at all displayed by amyrin.

The liquids from which bryoidin is obtained contain an amorphous brown substance of intensely bitter taste, at the same time somewhat aromatic. It is decomposed by dilute mineral acids, evolving a very peculiar strong odour.

Buri[616] isolated from Manila Elemi an extremely small amount of Elemic acid, C₃₅H₅₆O₄. It is in very brilliant crystals, much larger than those of the other constituents of elemi. Although we have before us some prisms of the acids several millimetres long, it has been found impossible to ascertain their crystallographic character, each of the prisms being formed of very intimately aggregated crystals. Elemic acid melts at 215° C.; its alcoholic solution decidedly reddens litmus. Elemate of potassium is a crystalline salt.

[615] Flückiger, Pharm. Journ. v. (1874) 142.

[616] Pharm. Journ. viii. (1878) 601.

The relations of the substances hitherto isolated from elemi may perhaps be given thus:—

Essential oil, C₅H₈. Amyrin, (C₅H₈)₅ + OH₂ Amorphous resin (?) (C₅H₈)₂ + OH₂ Bryoidin, (C₅H₈)₄ + 3OH₂ Elemic acid, (C₅H₈)₇ + O₄

=Uses=—Elemi is scarcely used in British medicine except in the form of an ointment, sometimes prescribed as a stimulating application to old wounds.

=Other sorts of Elemi=—1. Mexican Elemi, Vera Cruz Elemi—This drug, which used to be imported into London about thirty years ago, but which has now disappeared from commerce, is the produce of a tree named by Royle Amyris elemifera growing at Oaxaca in Mexico.[617] It is a light yellow, or whitish, brittle resin occurring in semi-cylindrical scraped pieces, or in irregular fragments which are sometimes translucent but more often dull and opaque. It easily softens in the mouth so that it may be masticated, and has an agreeable terebinthinous odour. Treated with cold spirit of wine (·828), it breaks down into a white magma of acicular crystals (Amyrin?).

2. Brazilian Elemi—Was described as long ago as 1658 by the traveller Piso, as a substance completely resembling the elemi of the Old World and applicable to the same purposes. It is the produce of several trees described as species of Icica, as I. Icicariba DC.,[618] I. heterophylla DC., I. heptaphylla Aublet, I. guianensis Aubl., I. altissima Aubl.—In New Granada a similar exudation[619] is furnished by I. Caranna H.B.K.

A specimen in our possession from Pernambuco[620] is a translucent, greenish yellow, fragrant, terebinthinous resin, which by cold spirit of wine may be separated into two portions, the one soluble, the other a mass of colourless acicular crystals. The resin spontaneously exuded and collected from the trunks, is often opaque and white, grey, or yellowish, looking not unlike fragments of old mortar. The microscope shows it to be made up of minute acicular crystals.[621]

3. Mauritius Elemi—Fine specimens of this substance and of Colophonia Mauritiana DC. the tree affording it, were sent to one of us (H.) in 1855 by Mr. Emile Fleurot of Mauritius. The resin accords in its general characters with Manila elemi, like which it leaves after treatment with cold spirit of wine, an abundance of crystals resembling amyrin.

[617] Royle’s very imperfect specimens of this plant are in the British Museum.

[618] Now Protium Icicariba Marchand, in Flora Brasiliensis, fascicul. 65 (1874) tab. liii.

[619] G. Planchon, Bulletin de la Soc. Bot. de France, xv. (1868) 16.

[620] Given me by Mr. Manley, late of Pernambuco. I have also an authentic specimen of the resin of I. heterophylla collected at Santarem, Pará, by Mr. H. W. Bates in 1853.—D. H.

[621] For some experiments on the resin of Icica, see Gmelin, Chemistry, xvi. (1866) 421.—Also Stenhouse and Groves, in Liebig’s Annalen der Chemie, 180 (1876) 253, on resin and oil of Icica heptaphylla. The former would appear to agree with the formula (C₅H₈)₉OH₂.

4. Luban Meyeti[622] or Luban Mati.—This substance, which we claim to be the Oriental or African Elemi of the older writers, and also one of the resins anciently designated Animi,[623] is the exudation of Boswellia Frereana Birdwood, a remarkable tree gregarious on the bare limestone hills near Bunder Murayah to the west of Cape Gardafui. The tree which is called Yegaar by the natives, is of small stature, and differs from the other species of Boswellia growing on the same coast in having glabrous, glaucous leaves with obtuse leaflets, crisped at the margin.[624] The bark is smooth, papery, and translucent, and easily stripped off in thin sheets which are used for writing on. Though growing wild, the trees are said by Capt. Miles[625] to be carefully watched and even sometimes propagated. The resin exudes after incision in great plenty, soon hardens, and is collected by the Somali tribes who dispose of it to traders for shipment to Jidda and ports of Yemen: occasionally a package reaches London among the shipments of olibanum. It is used in the East for chewing like mastich.

In modern times Luban Mati has been mentioned by Wellsted in his “Travels in Arabia” (1838).

Luban Meyeti occurs in the form of detached droppy tears and fragments, occasionally in stalactitic masses several ounces in weight. It breaks very easily with a brilliant conchoidal fracture, showing an internal substance of a pale amber yellow and perfectly transparent. Externally it is more or less coated with a thin opaque white crust, which seen under the microscope appears non-crystalline. Many of the tears have pieces of the thin, brown, papery bark adhering to them. The resin has an agreeable odour of lemon and turpentine, and a mild terebinthinous taste.

Treated with alcohol (·838) it is almost entirely dissolved; the very small undissolved portion is not crystalline. The former agrees with the formula C₂₀H₃₀O₂. 20 lb. of Luban Mati yielded us 10 ounces of a volatile oil (= 3·1 per cent.) having a fragrant odour suggestive of elemi and sp. gr. 0·856 at 17° C. The oil examined in a column 50 millim. long, deviates the ray 2°·5 to the left. By fractional distillation we found it to consist of dextrogyre hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, mixed with an oxygenated oil which we did not succeed in isolating; the latter is evidently lævogyre, and exists in proportion more than sufficient to overcome the weak dextrogyre power of the hydrocarbon.

There is no gum in this exudation; it is therefore essentially different from olibanum, the product of closely allied species of Boswellia.[626]

[622] Lubán is the general Arabic name for olibanum: meyeti perhaps from Jebel Meyet, a mountain of 1200 feet on the Somali Coast in long. 47° 10′.

[623] By the assistance of Professor G. Planchon we have ascertained that it is identically the same substance as described by Guibourt under the name Tacamaque jaune huileuse A.—Hist. des Drogues, iii. (1850) 483.

[624] Figured in Birdwood’s paper, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxvii. (1870) tab. 32; also, (reduced) in Cooke’s report on the Gums, Resins, etc., of the India Museum, 1874, plate iv.

[625] Journ. Geograph. Soc. xlii. (1872) 61.

[626] Flückiger, on Luban Mati and Olibanum, Pharm. Journ. viii (1878) 805, with sketch map of the Somali Coast.

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MELIACEÆ

CORTEX MARGOSÆ.

Cortex Azadirachtæ; Nim Bark, Margosa Bark.

=Botanical Origin=—Melia indica Brandis (M. Azadirachta L., Azadirachta indica Juss.), an ornamental tree, 40 to 50 feet high and attaining a considerable girth,[627] well known throughout India by its Hindustani name of Nim, or by its Portuguese appellation of Margosa.[628] It is much planted in avenues, but occurs wild in the forests of Southern India, Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago, as far as Java.[629]

The hard and heavy wood which is so bitter that no insect will attack it, the medicinal leaves and bark, the fruit which affords an acrid bitter oil used in medicine and for burning, the gum which exudes from the stem, and finally a sort of toddy obtained from young trees, cause the Nim to be regarded as one of the most useful trees of India.

M. indica is often confounded with M. Azedarach L., a native of China,[630] and probably of India, now widely distributed throughout the warmer regions of the globe, and not rare even in Sicily and other parts of the south of Europe. The former has an oval fruit (by abortion) one-celled and one-seeded, and leaves simply pinnate. The latter has the fruit five-celled, and leaves bipinnate.

=History=—The tree under the Sanskrit name of Nimba is mentioned in Susruta, one of the most ancient Hindu medical writings, composed perhaps about the 10th century of our era.

In common with many other productions of India, it attracted the notice of Garcia de Orta, physician to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa, and he published an account of it in his work on drugs in 1563.[631] Christoval Acosta[632] in 1578 supplied some further details and also a figure of the tree. The tonic properties of the bark, long recognized by the native physicians of India, were successively tested by Dr. D. White of Bombay in the beginning of the present century, and have since been generally admitted.[633] The drug has a place in the Pharmacopœia of India.

=Description=—The bark in our possession[634] is in coarse fibrous pieces about ⅕ of an inch thick and 2 to 3 inches wide, slightly channelled. The suberous coat is rough and cracked, and of a greyish rusty hue. The inner surface is of a bright buff and has a highly foliaceous structure. On making a transverse section three distinct layers may be observed—firstly the suberous coat exhibiting a large brown parenchyme interwoven with small bands of corky tissue,—secondly a dark cellular layer, and then the foliaceous liber. The dry bark is inodorous and has a slightly astringent bitter taste.

[627] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, Medic. Plants, part 27.

[628] From amargoso, bitter.

[629] C. De Candolle, in Monogr. Phanerogamar. i. (1878) 459.

[630] It is mentioned in Chinese writings dating long prior to the Christian era.—Bretschneider, Chinese Botanical Works, 1870. 12.

[631] Colloquios dos Simples, &c., Goa, 1563 Colloq. xl. p. 153.

[632] Tractado de las Drogas y Medicinas de las Indias Orientales, Burgos, 1578, cap. 43.

[633] Waring, in Pharmacopœia of India, 1868. 443.

[634] We are indebted for it to Mr. Broughton of Ootacamund.

=Microscopic Structure=—The suberous coat consists of numerous layers of ordinary cork-cells, which cover a layer of nearly cubic sclerenchymatous cells. This latter however is not always met with, secondary bands of cork (rhytidoma) frequently taking its place. The liber is commonly built up of strong fibre-bundles traversed by narrow medullary rays, and transversely separated by bands of parenchymatous liber tissue. Crystals of oxalate of calcium occur in the parenchyme more frequently than the small globular starch grains. The structure of the bark varies considerably according to the gradual development of the secondary cork-bands.

=Chemical Composition=—Margosa bark was chemically examined in India by Cornish[635] (1856), who announced it as a source of a bitter alkaloid to which he gave the name of Margosine, but which he obtained only in minute quantity as a “double salt of Margosine and Soda” in long white needles.

From the bitter oil of the seeds he isolated a substance which he called Margosic Acid, and which he doubted to be capable of affording crystallizable salts. The composition neither of this acid nor of margosine is known, nor have the properties of either been investigated.

The small sample of the bark at our disposal only enables us to add that an infusion produced with perchloride of iron a blackish precipitate, and that an infusion is not altered by tannic acid or iodohydrargyrate of potassium. If the inner layers of the bark are alone exhausted with water, the liquid affords an abundant precipitate with tannic acid; but if the entire bark is boiled in water, the tannic matter which it contains will form an insoluble compound with the bitter principle, and prevent the latter being dissolved. It is thus evident that to isolate the bitter matter of the bark, it would be advisable to work on the liber or inner layers alone, which might readily be done, as they separate easily.

According to the recent researches of Broughton[636] the bitter principle is an amorphous resin soluble in the usual solvents and in boiling solutions of fixed alkalis. From the latter it is precipitated by acids, yet, probably, altered. Broughton ascribed the formula C₃₆H₅₀O₁₁ to this bitter resin purified by means of bisulphide of carbon, ether and absolute alcohol; it fused at 92° C. He obtained moreover a small quantity of a crystallized principle, which he believed to be a fatty body, yet its melting point of 175° C. is not in favour of this suggestion.

=Uses=—In India the bark is used as a tonic and antiperiodic, both by natives and Europeans. Dr. Pulney Andy of Madras has found the leaves beneficial in small-pox.

[635] Indian Annals of Medical Science, Calcutta, iv. (1857) 104.

[636] Madras Monthly Journ. Med. Science, quoted in Pharm. Journ. June 14, 1873, 992.

CORTEX SOYMIDA.

Cortex Swieteniæ; Rohun Bark.

=Botanical Origin=—Soymida[637] febrifuga Juss. (Swietenia febrifuga Willd.), a tree of considerable size not uncommon in the forests of Central and Southern India. The timber called by Europeans Bastard Cedar is very durable and strong, and much valued for building purposes.

=History=—The introduction of Rohun Bark into the medical practice of Europeans is due to Roxburgh[638] who recommended the drug as a substitute for Cinchona, after numerous trials made in India about the year 1791. At the same time he sent supplies to Edinburgh, where Duncan made it the subject of a thesis[639] which probably led to it being introduced into the materia medica of the Edinburgh Pharmacopœia of 1803, and of the Dublin Pharmacopœia of 1807.

Though thus officially recognized, it does not appear that the bark came much into use or by any other means fulfilled the expectations raised in its favour. At present it is regarded simply as a useful astringent tonic, and as such it has a place in the Pharmacopœia of India (1868).

=Description=—Our specimen of Rohun bark[640] which is from a young tree, is in straight or somewhat curved, half-tubular quills, an inch or more in diameter and about ⅕ of an inch in thickness. Externally it is of a rusty grey or brown, with a smoothish surface exhibiting no considerable furrows or cracks, but numerous small corky warts. These form little elliptic scars or rings, brown in the centre and but slightly raised from the surface. The inner side and edges of the quills are of a bright reddish colour.

A transverse section exhibits a thin outer layer coloured by chlorophyll, and a middle layer of a bright rusty hue, traversed by large medullary rays and darker wedge-shaped rays of liber. The latter has a fibrous fracture, that of the outer part of the bark being rather corky or foliaceous. The whole bark when comminuted is of a rusty colour, becoming reddish by exposure to air and moisture. It has a bitter astringent taste with no distinctive odour. The older bark frequently half an inch thick and fibrous, has a thick ragged corky layer of a rusty blackish-brown colour, deeply fissured longitudinally, and minutely cracked transversely. Old bark, according to Dymock (1877), is generally in half quills of a rich red-brown colour.

=Microscopic Structure=—The bark presents but few structural peculiarities. The ring of liber is made up of alternating prosenchymatous and parenchymatous tissue. In the latter the larger cells are filled with mucilage, the others with starch. The prosenchymatous groups of the liber exhibit that peculiar form we have already described as hornbast (p. 74); it chiefly contains the tannic matter, besides stellate crystals of oxalate of calcium which are distributed through the whole tissue of the bark. The medullary rays are of the usual form, and contain starch granules. The corky coat is built up of a smaller number of vaulted cells.

[637] From Sómida, the Teluga name of the tree; Róhan is its name in Hindustani.—Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, part 18 (1877).—See also C. De Candolle, in Monogr. Phanerogamar. i. (1878) 722.

[638] Medical Facts and Observations, Lond. vi. (1795) 127.

[639] Tentamen inaugurale de Swieteniâ Soymidâ, Edinb. 1794.

[640] Kindly sent us by Mr. Broughton of Ootacamund.

=Chemical Composition=[641]—The bitter principle of the bark has been ascertained by Broughton[642] to be a nearly colourless resinous substance, sparingly soluble in water but more so in alcohol, ether, or benzol. It does not appear to unite with acids or bases, and is less soluble in water containing them than in pure water. It has a very bitter taste, and refuses to crystallize either from benzol or ether. It contains no nitrogen. To this we may add that the bark is rich in tannic acid.

=Uses=—Rohun bark is administered in India as an astringent tonic and antiperiodic, and is reported useful in intermittent fevers and general debility, as well as in the advanced stages of dysentery and in diarrhœa.

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RHAMNACEÆ

FRUCTUS RHAMNI.

Baccæ Rhamni, Baccæ Spinæ cervinæ; Buckthorn Berries; F. Baies de Neprun; G. Kreuzdornbeeren.

=Botanical Origin=—Rhamnus cathartica L., a robust diœcious shrub with spreading branches, the smaller of which often terminate in a stout thorn. It is indigenous to Northern Africa, the greater part of Europe, and stretches eastward to the Caucasus and into Siberia. We have seen stems 50 years old, having a diameter of 8 inches, sent from the government of Cherson, Southern Russia. In England the buckthorn though generally distributed is abundant only in certain districts; in Scotland it occurs wild in but a single locality. Yet in Norway, Sweden, and Finland it grows much further north.

The fruit which ripens in the autumn is collected for use chiefly in the counties of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and also from Wiltshire. The collectors usually prefer to supply the juice as expressed by themselves.

=History=—The Buckthorn was well known to the Anglo-Saxons, and is mentioned as Hartsthorn or Waythorn in their medical writings and glossaries dating before the Norman conquest. The Welsh physicians of Myddfai (“Meddygon Myddvai”) in the 13th century prescribed the juice of the fruit of buckthorn boiled with honey as an aperient drink.

As Spina Cervina the shrub is referred to by Piero de’ Crescenzi of Bologna[643] about A.D. 1305.

[641] The analysis alluded to in the Pharm. of India (p. 444) concerns Khaya (Swietenia) senegalensis, and not the present species, as my friend Dr. Overbeck has informed me.—F. A. F.

[642] Beddome, Flora Sylvatica, Madras, part i. (1869) 8,—also information communicated direct.

[643] Trattato dall’ Agricoltura, Milano, 1805, 10. iii. c. 58.

The medicinal use of the berries was familiar to all the writers on botany and materia medica of the 16th century. Syrup of buckthorn first appeared in the London Pharmacopœia of 1650; it was aromatized by means of aniseed, cinnamon, mastich and nutmeg.

=Description=—The fruits, which are only used in the fresh state, are small, juicy, spherical drupes the size of a pea, black and shining, bearing on the summit the remnants of the style, and supported below by a slender stalk expanded into a disc-like receptacle. Before ripening the fruit is green and distinctly 4-lobed, afterwards smooth and plump. It contains 4 one-seeded nuts[644] meeting at right angles in the middle. The seed is erect with a broad furrow on the back: in transverse section the albumen and cotyledons are seen to be curved into a horseshoe form with the ends directed outwards.

The fresh juice is green, has an acid reaction and a sweetish, afterwards disagreeably bitter taste, and repulsive odour. It is coloured dingy green by ferric chloride, yellow by alkalis, red by acids. According to Umney[645] it should have a sp. gr. of 1·070 to 1·075, but is seldom sold pure. By keeping the juice gradually turns red.

=Microscopic Structure=—The epidermis consists of small tabular cells, followed by a row of large cubic cells and then by several layers of tangentially-extended cells rich in chlorophyll. This thick epicarp passes into the loose thin-walled and large-celled sarocarp. Besides chlorophyll it exhibits numerous cells each containing a kind of sac, which may be squeezed out of the cell. These sacs are violet, turning blue with alkalis. Similar, yet much more conspicuous bodies occur also in the pulp of the Locust Bean (Ceratonia Siliqua L.).

=Chemical Composition=—The berries of buckthorn and other species of Rhamnus contain interesting colouring matters, which have been the subject of much chemical research and controversy. Winckler in 1849 extracted from the juice Rhamnocathartin, a yellowish uncrystallizable bitter substance, soluble in water but not in ether. Alkalis colour it golden yellow; perchloride of iron, dark greenish brown.

In 1840 Fleury, a pharmacien of Pontoise, discovered in buckthorn juice a yellow substance forming cauliflower-like crystals to which he gave the name of Rhamnine. This body has been recently studied by Lefort,[646] who identified it with the Rhamnetine of Galletly (1858) and the Chrysorhamnine of Schützenberger and Bertèche (1865). Though obtainable from the berries of all kinds of Rhamnus used in dyeing (including the common buckthorn), it is got most easily and abundantly from Persian Berries. When pure, and crystallized from absolute alcohol, it is described as forming minute yellow translucent tables. It is scarcely soluble in cold water, though colouring it pale yellow; is soluble in hot alcohol, insoluble in ether or bisulphide of carbon. It is very soluble in caustic alkalis, forming uncrystallizable reddish-yellow solutions. From alkaline solutions it is precipitated by a mineral acid in the form of a glutinous magma resembling hydrated silica. Lefort assigns to it the formula C₁₂H₁₂O₅ + 2H₂O.

[644] In Rh. Frangula L., the other British species, the fruit has 2 nuts.

[645] Pharm. Journ. Nov. 23 (1872) 404, and July 11 (1874) 21.

[646] Sur les graines des Nerpruns tinctoriaux.—Journ. de Pharm. iv. (1866) 420.—See also the investigations of Liebermann and Hörmann, 1879.

This chemist has likewise found in the berries of Rhamnus, though not with certainty in those of R. cathartica, a neutral substance isomeric with rhamnine, to which he has given the name of Rhamnegine. Unlike rhamnine it is very soluble in cold water, but in all other respects it agrees with that body in chemical and physical properties. The two substances have the same taste, almost the same tint, the same crystalline form, and lastly they give rise to the same reactions with chemical agents.

The conclusions of Lefort have been contested by Stein (1868) and by Schützenberger (1868), the latter of whom succeeded in decomposing rhamnegine and proving it a glucoside having the formula C₂₄H₃₂O₁₄. Its decomposition gives rise to a body named Rhamnetin, C₁₂H₁₀O₅, and a crystallizable sugar isomeric with mannite. Schützenberger admits that the berries contain an isomeric modification of rhamnegine; but in addition another colouring matter insoluble in water, which appears to be the Rhamnine of Lefort, but to which he assigns a different formula, namely, C₁₈H₂₂O₁₀. This is also a glucoside capable of being split into rhamnetin and a sugar. There are thus, according to Schützenberger, two forms of rhamnegine which may be distinguished as α and β, and there is the substance insoluble in water, named by Lefort Rhamnine.

The question of the purgative principles of buckthorn, it will be observed, has not been touched by all these researches.

=Uses=—From the juice of the berries is prepared a syrup having strongly purgative properties, much more used as a medicine for animals than for man. The pigment Sap Green is also made from the juice.

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AMPELIDEÆ

UVÆ PASSÆ.

Passulæ majores; Raisins; F. Raisins; G. Rosinen.

=Botanical Origin=—Vitis vinifera L., the Common Grape-vine. It appears to be indigenous to the Caucasian provinces of Russia, that is to say, to the country lying between the eastern end of the Black Sea and the south-western shores of the Caspian; extending thence southward into Armenia. Under innumerable varieties, it is cultivated in most of the warmer and drier countries of the temperate regions of both the northern and southern hemispheres. Humboldt defines the area of the profitable culture of the vine as a zone lying between 36° and 40° of north latitude.

=History=—The vine is among the oldest of cultivated plants, and is mentioned in the earliest Mosaic writings. Dried grapes as distinguished from fresh were used by the ancient Hebrews, and in the Vulgate are translated Uvæ passæ.[647] During the middle ages, raisins were an article of luxury imported into England from Spain.

[647] Numbers vi. 3; 1 Sam. xxv. 18, xxx. 12; 2 Sam. xvi. 1; 1 Chron. xii. 40.

=Description=—The ovary of Vitis vinifera is 2-celled with 2 ovules in each cell; it develops into a succulent, pedicellate berry of spherical or ovoid form, in which the cells are obliterated and some of the seeds generally abortive. As the fruit is not articulated with the rachis or the rachis with the branch, it does not drop at maturity but remains attached to the plant, on which, provided there is sufficient solar heat, it gradually withers and dries: such fruits are called Raisins of the sun. Various methods are adopted to facilitate the drying of the fruit, such as dipping the bunches in boiling water or in a lye of wood ashes, or twisting or partially severing the stalk,—the effect of each operation being to arrest or destroy the vitality of the tissues. The drying is performed by exposure to the sun, sometimes supplemented by artificial heat.

The raisins commonly found in the shops are the produce of Spain and Asia Minor, and are sold either in entire bunches or removed from the stalk. The former kind, known as Muscatel Raisins and imported from Malaga, are dried and packed with great care for use as a dessert fruit. The latter kind, which includes the Valencia Raisins of Spain, and the Eleme, Chesme and stoneless Sultana Raisins of Smyrna, are used for culinary purposes. For pharmacy, Valencia raisins are generally employed.

=Microscopic Structure=—The outer layer or skin of the berry is made up of small tabular cells loaded with a reddish granular matter, which on addition of an alcoholic solution of perchloride of iron assumes a dingy green hue. The interior parenchyme exhibits large, thin-walled, loose cells containing an abundance of crystals (bitartrate of potassium and sugar). There are also some fibro-vascular bundles traversing the tissue in no regular order.

=Chemical Composition=—The pulp abounds in grape sugar and cream of tartar, each of which in old raisins may be found crystallized in nodular masses; it also contains gum and malic acid. The seeds afford 15 to 18 per cent. of a bland fixed oil, which is occasionally extracted. Fitz[648] has shown that it consists of the glycerides of Erucic Acid, C₂₂H₄₂O₂, stearic acid, and palmitic acid, the first-named acid largely prevailing. The crystals of erucic acid melt at 34° C.; by means of fused potash they may be resolved into arachic acid, C₂₀H₄₀O₂, and acetic acid, C₂H₄O₂.

The seeds further contain 5 to 6 per cent. of tannic acid, which also exists in the skin of the fruit. The latter is likewise the seat of chlorophyll and other colouring matter.

=Commerce=—The consumption of raisins in Great Britain is very large and is increasing. The imports into the United Kingdom have been as follows:—

1870. 1871. 1872. 1876. 365,418 427,056 617,418 583,860 cwt. val. £593,527. val. £707,344. val. £1,149,337. val. £1,058,406.

Of the quantity mentioned for 1872 there were 400,570 cwt. shipped from Spain, 176,500 cwt. from Asiatic Turkey, and the remainder from other countries.[649] It is stated that Greece, in 1874, exported about 1⅓ millions of cwt., value £28,000,000; much of this was shipped to England.

[648] Berichte der deutsch. chem. Gesellsch. zu Berlin, iv. (1871) 442.

[649] Annual Statement of the Trade of the United Kingdom.

=Uses=—Raisins are an ingredient of Compound Tincture of Cardamoms and of Tincture of Senna. They have no medicinal properties, and are only used for the sake of the saccharine matter they impart.[650]

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ANACARDIACEÆ

MASTICHE.

Mastix, Resina Mastiche; Mastich; F. Mastic; G. Mastix.

=Botanical Origin=—Pistacia Lentiscus L., the lentisk, is a diœcious evergreen, mostly found as a shrub a few feet high; but when allowed to attain its full growth, it slowly acquires the dimensions of a small tree having a dense head of foliage. It is a native of the Mediterranean shores from Syria to Spain, and is found in Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries. In some parts of Italy it is largely cut for fuel.

Mastich is collected in the northern part of the island of Scio, which was long regarded as the only region in the world capable of affording it. Experiments made in 1856 by Orphanides[651] have proved that excellent mastich might be easily obtained in other islands of the Archipelago, and probably also in Continental Greece. The same botanist remarks that the trees yielding mastich in Scio are exclusively male.

=History=—Mastich has been known from a very remote period, and is mentioned by Theophrastus,[652] who lived in the 4th century before the Christian era. Both Dioscorides and Pliny notice it as a production of the island of Chio, the modern Scio.

Avicenna[653] described (about the year 1000) two sorts of mastich, the white or Roman (i.e. Mediterranean or Christian), and the dark or Nabathæan,—the latter probably one of the Eastern forms of the drug mentioned at p. 165.

Benjamin of Tudela,[654] who visited the island of Scio when travelling to the East about A.D. 1160-1173, also refers to it yielding mastich, which in fact has always been one of its most important productions, and from the earliest times intimately connected with its history.

Mastich was prescribed in the 13th century by the Welsh “Meddygon Myddvai” as an ingredient of ointments.

[650] The amount of this is very small. On macerating crushed raisins in proof spirit in the proportion of 2 oz. to a pint, we found each fluid ounce of the tincture so obtained to afford by evaporation to dryness 28 grains of a dark viscid sugary extract.

[651] Heldreich, Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, Athen, 1862. 61.

[652] Hist. Plant. lib. ix. c. 1.

[653] Lib. ii. c. 462.

[654] Wright, Early Travels in Palestine, 1848. 77. (Bohn’s series).

In the middle ages the mastich of Scio was held as a monopoly by the Greek emperors, one of whom, Michael Paleologus in 1261, permitted the Genoese to settle in the island. His successor Andronicus II. conceded in 1304 the administration of the island to Benedetto Zaccaria, a rich patrician of Genoa and the proprietor of the alum works of Fokia (the ancient Phocæa), north-west of Smyrna, for ten years, renouncing all tribute during that period. The concession was very lucrative, a large revenue being derived from the Contrata del Mastico or Mastich district: and the Zaccaria family, taking advantage of the weakness of the emperor, determined to hold it as long as possible. In fact they made themselves the real sovereigns of Scio and of some of the adjacent islands, and retained their position until expelled by Andronicus III. in 1329.[655]

The island was retaken by the Genoese under Simone Vignosi in 1346; and then by a remarkable series of events became the property of an association called the Maona (the Arabic word for subsidy or reinforcement). Many of the noblest families of Genoa enrolled themselves in this corporation and settled in the island of Scio; and in order to express the community of interest that governed their proceedings, some of them relinquished their family names and assumed the general name of Giustiniani.[656] This extraordinary society played a part exactly comparable to that of the late East India Company. In Genoa it had its “Officium Chii”; it had its own constitution and mint, and it engaged in wars with the emperors of Constantinople, the Venetians and the Turks, who in turn attacked and ravaged the mastich island and adjacent possessions.

The Giustinianis regulated very strictly the culture of the lentisk and the gathering and export of its produce, and cruelly punished all offenders. The annual export of the drug was 300 to 400 quintals,[657] which were immediately assigned to the four regions with which the Maona chiefly traded. These were Romania (i.e. Greece, Constantinople and the Crimea), Occidente (Italy, France, Spain and Germany), Vera Turchia (Asia Minor), and Oriente (Syria, Egypt, and Northern Africa). In 1364, a quintal was sold for 40 lire; in 1417, the price was fixed at 25 lire. In the 16th century, the whole income from the drug was 30,000 ducats (£13,750),[658] a large sum for that period.

In 1566, the Giustinianis definitively lost their beautiful island, the Turks under Piali Pasha taking it by force of arms under pretext that the customary tribute was not duly paid.[659] A few years before that event, it was visited by the French naturalist Belon[660] who testifies from personal observation to the great care with which the lentisk was cultivated by the inhabitants.

[655] Friar Jordanus who visited Scio circa 1330 (?) noticed the production of mastich, and also the loss of the island by Martino Zaccaria.—Mirabilia descripta, or Wonders of the East, edited by Col. Yule for the Hakluyt Society, 1863.

[656] Probably partly for the reason that a Palazzo Giustiniani in Genoa had become the property of the Society. In the little “Piazza Giustiniani,” near the cathedral of San Lorenzo, that palace may still be seen, but there is only a large view of the island of Scio which would remind of the Maona. I was told in 1874 by Sig. Canale, the historian of Genoa, that he thought it doubtful that the Officium Chii had resided in the said palace.—F. A. F..

[657] An incidental notice showing the value of the trade occurs in the letter of Columbus (himself a Genoese) announcing the result of his first voyage to the Indies. In stating what may be obtained from the island of Hispaniola, he mentions—gold and spices ... and mastich, hitherto found only in Greece in the island of Scio, and which the Signoria sells at its own price, as much as their Highnesses (Ferdinand and Isabella) shall command to be shipped. The letter bears date 15 Feb. 1493.—Letters of Christobal Columbus (Hakluyt Society) 1870. p. 15.

[658] The ducat being reckoned at 9_s_. 2_d_.

[659] For further particulars respecting the history of Scio, the Maona, and the trade of the Genoese in the Levant, see Hopf in Ersch and Grubber’s Encyclopädie, vol. 68 (Leipzig, 1859) art. Giustiniani; also Heyd Colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente i. (1866).

[660] Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, etc. Paris, 1554. liv. ii. ch. 8. p. 836.

When Tournefort[661] was at Scio in 1701, all the lentisk trees on the island were held to be the property of the Grand Signor, and if any land was sold, the sale did not include the lentisks that might be growing on it. At that time the mastich villages, about twenty in number, were required to pay 286 chests of mastich annually to the Turkish officers appointed to receive the revenue.

In the beginning of the present century, when Olivier[662] paid a visit to the island of Chios, he found 50,000 ocche (one occa = 2·82 lb. avdp. = 1·28 kilogrammes) or somewhat more to be the annual harvest of mastich.

The month of January, 1850, was memorable throughout Greece and the Archipelago for a frost of unparalleled severity which proved very destructive to the mastich trees of Scio, and occasioned a scarcity of the drug that lasted for many years.[663]

The foregoing statements show that for centuries past Scio or Chios was famed for this resin; there are however a few evidences proving that at least a little mastich used also to be collected in other islands. Amari[664] quoted an Arabic geographer of the 12th century speaking of “il mastice di Pantellaria cavato da’ lentischi e lo storace odorifero.” Pantellaria, Kossura of the ancients, is the small volcanic island south-west of Sicily, not far from Tunis. In a list enumerating the drugs to be met with in 1582 in the fair of Frankfurt[665] we find even mastich of Cyprus quoted as superior to the common. Cyprian mastich again occurs in the pharmaceutical tariffs of 1612 and 1669 of the same city, and in many others of that time.[666]

The disuse into which mastich has fallen makes it difficult to understand its ancient importance; but a glance at the pharmacopœias of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries shows that it was an ingredient of a large number of compound medicines.[667]

=Secretion=—In the bark of the stems and branches of the mastich shrub, there are resin-ducts like those in the aromatic roots of Umbelliferæ or Compositæ. In Pistacia they may even be shown in the petioles. The wood is devoid of resin,[668] so that slight incisions are sufficient to provoke the resinous exudation, the bark being not very thick, and liable to scale off.

[661] Voyage into the Levant, i. (1718) 285.

[662] Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman et la Perse, ii. (Paris, 1801) 132-136.

[663] At Athens the mercury was for a short time at -10° C. (14° F.) In Scio, where the frost was probably quite as severe, though we have no exact data, the mischief to the lentisks varied with the locality, trees exposed to the north or growing at considerable elevations, being killed down to the base of the trunk, while those in more favoured positions suffered destruction only in some of their branches.

[664] Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, iii. (1872) 787.

[665] Flückiger, Documente zur Geschichte der Pharmacie, Halle, 1876. 31.

[666] Ibid. 41. 65.

[667] Thus in the London Pharmacopœia of 1632, mastich enters into 24 of the 37 different kinds of pill, besides which it is prescribed in troches and ointments.

[668] See Unger and Kotsehy, Die Insel Cypern, Wien, 1865. 424.

=Collection=—In Scio incisions are made about the middle of June in the bark of the stems and principal branches. From these incisions which are vertical and very close together, the resin speedily flows, and soon hardens and dries. After 15 to 20 days it is collected with much care in little baskets lined with white paper or clean cotton wool. The ground below the trees is kept hard and clean, and flat pieces of stone are often laid on it that the droppings of resin may be saved uninjured by dirt. There is also some spontaneous exudation from the small branches which is of very fine quality. The operations are carried on by women and children and last for a couple of months. A fine tree may yield as much as 8 to 10 pounds of mastich.

The dealers in Scio distinguish three or four qualities of the drug, of which the two finer are called κυλιστὸ and ϕλισκάρι, that collected from the ground πῆττα, and the worst of all ϕλοῦδα.[669]

=Description=—The best sort of mastich consists of roundish tears about the size of small peas, together with pieces of an oblong or pear-shaped form. They are of a pale yellow or slightly greenish tint darkening by age, dusty and slightly opaque on the surface but perfectly transparent within. The mastich of late imported has been washed; the tears are no longer dusty, but have a glassy transparent appearance. Mastich is brittle, has a conchoidal fracture, a slight terebinthinous balsamic odour. It speedily softens in the mouth, and may be easily masticated and kneaded between the teeth, in this respect differing from sandarac, a tear of which breaks to powder when bitten.

Inferior mastich is less transparent, and consists of masses of larger size and less regular shape, often contaminated with earthy and vegetable impurities.

The sp. gr. of selected tears of mastich is about 1·06. They soften at 99° C. but do not melt below 108°.

Mastich dissolves in half its weight of pure warm acetone and then deviates the ray of polarized light to the right. On cooling, the solution becomes turbid. It dissolves slowly in 5 parts of oil of cloves, forming even in the cold a clear solution; it is but little soluble in glacial acetic acid or in benzol.

=Chemical Composition=—Mastich is soluble to the extent of about 90 per cent in cold alcohol; the residue, which has been termed Masticin or Beta-resin of Mastich, is a translucent, colourless, tough substance, insoluble in boiling alcohol or in solution of caustic alkali, but dissolving in ether or oil of turpentine. According to Johnston, it is somewhat less rich in oxygen than the following.

The soluble portion of mastich, called Alpha-resin of Mastich, possesses acid properties, and like many other resins has the formula C₂₀H₃₂O₃. Hartsen[670] asserts that it can be obtained in crystals. Its alcoholic solution is precipitated by an alcoholic solution of neutral acetate of lead. Mastich contains a very little volatile oil.

[669] Heldreich (and Orphanides) Nutzpflanzen Griechenlands, Athen, 1862, 60.

[670] Berichte der deutschen chem. Gesellsch. 1876. 316.

=Commerce=—Mastich still forms the principal revenue of Scio, from which island the export in 1871 was 28,000 lb. of picked, and 42,000 lb. of common. The market price of picked mastich was equal to 6_s_. 10_d_. per lb.—that of common 2_s_. 10_d_. The superior quality is sent to Turkey, especially Constantinople, also to Trieste, Vienna, and Marseilles, and a small quantity to England. The common sort is employed in the East in the manufacture of raki and other cordials.[671]

=Uses=—Mastich is not now regarded as possessing any important therapeutic virtues, and as a medicine is becoming obsolete. Even in varnish making it is no longer employed as formerly, its place being well supplied by less costly resins, such for example as dammar.

=Varieties=—There is found in the Indian bazaars a kind of mastich which though called Mustagi-rúmí (Roman mastich), is not imported from Europe but from Kabul, and is the produce of Pistacia Khinjuk Stocks, and the so-called P. cabulica St. trees growing all over Sind, Belúchistan and Kabul.[672] This drug, of which the better qualities closely approximate to the mastich of Scio, sometimes appears in the European market under the name of East Indian or Bombay Mastich. We find that when dissolved in half its weight of acetone or benzol, it deviates the ray of light to the right.

The solid resin of the Algerian form of P. Terebinthus L., known as P. atlantica Desf., is collected and used as mastich by the Arab tribes of Northern Africa.[673]

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TEREBINTHINA CHIA

Terebinthina Cypria; Chian or Cyprian Turpentine; F. Térébenthine ou Baume de Chio ou de Chypres; G. Chios Terpenthin, Cyprischer Terpenthin.

=Botanical Origin=—Pistacia Terebinthus L. (P. atlantica Desf., P. palæstina Boiss., P. cabulica Stocks), a tree 20 to 40 feet or more in height, in some countries only a shrub, common on the islands and shores of the Mediterranean as well as throughout Asia Minor, extending, as P. palæstina, to Syria and Palestine; and eastward, as P. cabulica, to Belúchistan and Afghanistan. It is found under the form called P. atlantica in Northern Africa, where it grows to a large size, and in the Canary Islands.

These several forms are mostly regarded as so many distinct species; but after due consideration and the examination of a large number of specimens both dried and living, we have arrived at the conclusion that they may fairly be united under a single specific name. The extreme varieties certainly present great differences of habit, as anyone would observe who had compared Pistacia Terebinthus as the straggling bush which it is in Languedoc and Provence, with the noble umbrageous tree it forms in the neighbourhood of Smyrna. But the different types are united by so many connecting links, that we have felt warranted in dissenting from the opinion usually held respecting them.

On the branches of Pistacia Terebinthus, a kind of galls is produced, which we shall briefly notice in our article Gallæe halepenses.

[671] Consul Cumberbatch, Report on Trade of Smyrna for 1871.—Raki, derived from the Turkish word sâqiz, for mastich, which, strange to say, would appear to have its home on the Baltic. In the vocabularies of the Old-Prussian idiom “sachis” is found meaning resin.—Blau, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellsch., xxix. 582.

[672] Powell, Economic Products of the Punjab, Roorkee, 1868. 411.

[673] Guibourt, Hist. d. Drog. iii. (1850) 458; Armieux, Topographie médicale du Sahara, Paris, 1866. 58.

=History=—The terebinth was well known to the ancients; it is the τέρμινθος of Theophrastus, τερέβινθος of other authors, and the Alah of the Old Testament.[674] Among its products, the kernels were regarded by Dioscorides as unwholesome, though agreeable in taste. By pressing them, the original Oil of Turpentine, τερεβίνθινον ἔλαιον, a mixture of essential and fat oil was obtained, as it is in the East to the present day. The resinous juice of the stem and branches, the true, primitive turpentine, ῤητίνη τερμινθίνη, was celebrated as the finest of all analogous products, and preferred both to mastich and the pinic resins. To the latter however the name of turpentine was finally applied.[675]

=Collection=—The resinous juice is secreted in the bark, according to Unger,[676] and Marchand,[677] in special cells precisely as mastich in P. Lentiscus. That found in commerce is collected in the island of Scio. To some extent it exudes spontaneously, yet in greater abundance after incisions made in the stems and branches. This is done in spring, and the resin continues to flow during the whole summer; but the quantity is so small that not more that 10 or 11 ounces are obtained from a large tree in the course of a year. The turpentine, hardened by the coolness of the night, is scraped from the stem down which it has flowed, or from flat stones placed at the foot of the tree to receive it. As it is, when thus collected, always mixed with foreign substances, it is purified to some extent by straining through small baskets, after having been liquefied by exposure to the sun.

When Tournefort[678] visited Scio in 1701, the island was said to produce scarcely 300 okes or ocche (one occa = 2·82 lb. avdp.); a century later Olivier[679] stated, that the turpentine was becoming very scarce, 200 ocche only, or even less, being the annual yield. It was then carefully collected by means of little earthen vessels tied to the incised stems. The trade is asserted to be now almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews, who dispose of the drug in the interior part of the Turkish Empire.[680]

=Description=—A specimen collected by Maltass near Smyrna in 1858 was, after ten years, of a light yellowish colour, scarcely fluid though perfectly transparent, nearly of the odour of melted colophony or mastich, and without much taste. We found it readily soluble in spirit of wine, amylic alcohol, glacial acetic acid, benzol, or acetone, the solution in each case being very slightly fluorescent. The alcoholic solution reddens litmus, and is neither bitter nor acrid. Two parts of this genuine turpentine dissolved in one of acetone deviate a ray of polarized light 7° to the right[681] in a column 50 mm. long.

[674] Genesis xii. 6, where the word is rendered in our version plain.

[675] Further historical information on the Terebinth may be found in Hehn’s Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, Berlin, 1877. 336.

[676] Unger u. Kotschy, die Insel Cypern, 1865. 361. 424.

[677] Revision du groupe des Anacardiacées. Paris, 1869. 150. Plate iii. shows the resiniferous ducts of a branch two years old.

[678] Voyage into the Levant, i. (1718) 287.

[679] Voy. dans l’Empire Othoman, etc., ii. (1801) 136.

[680] Maltass, Pharm. Journ. xvii. (1856) 540.

[681] A solution of mastich made in the same proportion deviates 3° to the right.

Chian turpentine as found in commerce and believed to be genuine, is a soft solid, becoming brittle, by exposure to the air; viewed in mass it appears opaque and of a dull brown hue. If pressed while warm between two slips of glass, it is seen to be transparent, of a yellowish-brown, and much contaminated by various impurities in a state of fine division. It has an agreeable, mild terebinthinous odour and very little taste. The whitish powder with which old Chian turpentine becomes covered, shows no trace of crystalline structure when examined under the microscope.

=Chemical Composition=—Chian turpentine consists of resin and essential oil. The former is probably identical with the Alpha-resin of mastich. The Beta-resin or Masticin appears to be absent, for we find that Chian turpentine deprived of its essential oil by a gentle heat, dissolves entirely (impurities excepted) in alcohol sp. gr. 0·815, which is by no means the case with mastich.

The essential oil which we obtained by distilling with water 64 ounces of Chian turpentine of authentic origin, amounted to nearly 14½ per cent. It has the odour of the drug; sp. gr. 0·869; boiling point 161° C.; it deviates the ray of polarized light 12·1° to the right. In common with turpentine oils of the Coniferæ, it contains a small amount of an oxygenated oil, and is therefore vividly attacked by sodium. When this reaction is over and the oil is again distilled, it boils at 157° C. and has a sp. gr. of 0·862. It has now a more agreeable odour, resembling a mixture of cajuput, mace, and camphor, and nearly the same rotatory power (11·5° to the right). By saturation with dry hydrochloric acid, it yields a solid compound after some weeks. After treatment with sodium and rectification, the oil was found[682] to consist of C 88·75, H 11·40 per cent., which is the composition of oil of turpentine.

=Uses=—Chian Turpentine appears to have exactly the properties of the pinic turpentines; in British medicine it is almost obsolete. In Greece it is sometimes added to wine or used to flavour cordials, in the same manner as turpentine of the pine, or mastich.

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GALLÆ CHINENSES SEU JAPONICÆ

=Botanical Origin=—The plant which bears this important kind of gall, is Rhus semialata Murray (Rh. Bucki-amela Roxb.), a tree attaining 30 to 40 feet, common in Northern India, China and Japan, ascending in the outer Himalaya and the Kasia hills to elevations of 2,500 to 6,000 feet.[683]

=History=—In China these galls are probably known and used both medicinally and in dyeing since very long; they are mentioned in the herbal Puntsaou, written in the middle of the 16th century. They also occur in Cleyer’s “Specimen medicinæ sinicæ,” Frankfort, 1682, No. 225, under the name u poi çu.[684] Kämpfer[685] also mentions a tree “Baibokf, vulgo Fusi,” growing on the hills, the pinnate leaves of which he found often provided with an excrescence: “Ἐπίϕνσι foliorum informi, tuberosa, multiplici, tenui, dura, cava, Gallæ nostratis usu praestante.” No doubt this refers to the galls under notice; they began to be imported into Europe about 1724, and are noticed by Geoffroy[686] as Oreilles des Indes, but they seem to have soon disappeared from the market. Pereira directed attention to them in 1844, since which time they have formed a regular and abundant article of import both from China and Japan.

[682] From analysis performed in my laboratory by Dr. Kraushaar.—F. A. F.

[683] Wight, Icones Plantar. Indiæ orientalis, ii. (Madras, 1843) tab. 561, gives a good figure.

[684] Hanbury, Science Papers, 266.

[685] Amœnitates exoticæ, 1712. 895.

[686] Mém. de l’Académie royale des Sciences, Paris, 1724. 324.—Also Du Halde, Description de l’Empire de la Chine, iii. (La Haye, 1736) 615-625. “Des Ou Poey tsé.” The author quotes numerous medicinal applications for these galls.

=Formation=—Chinese galls are vesicular protuberances formed on the leafstalks and branches of the above-mentioned tree, by the puncture of an insect, identified and figured by Doubleday[687] as a species of Aphis, and subsequently named provisionally by Jacob Bell[688] A. chinensis. We have no account by any competent observer of their growth; and as to their development, we can only imagine it from the analogous productions seen in Europe. According to Doubleday, it is probable that the female aphis punctures the upper surface of a leaf (more probably leafstalk), the result of the wound being the growth of a hollow expansion in the vegetable tissue. Of this cavity the creature takes possession and brings forth a progeny which lives by puncturing the inner surface of their home, thus much increasing the tendency to a morbid expansion of the soft growing tissue in an outward direction. Meanwhile the neck of the sac-like gall thickens, the aperture contracts and finally closes, imprisoning all the inmates. Here they live and multiply until, as in the case of the pistacia gall of Europe, the sac ruptures and allows of their escape. This, we may imagine, takes place at the period when, after some generations all wingless and perhaps all female (for the female aphis produces for several generations without impregnation), a winged generation is brought forth of both sexes. These may then fly to other spots, and deposit eggs for a further propagation of their race.

The galls are collected when their green colour is changing into yellow; they are then scalded.[689]

=Description=—The galls are light and hollow, varying in length from 1 to 2½ inches, and of extremely diverse and irregular form. The simplest are somewhat egg-shaped, the smaller end being attached to the leafstalk; but the form is rarely so regular, and more often the body of the gall is distorted by numerous knobby or horn-like protuberances or branches; or the gall consists of several lobes uniting in their lower part and gradually attenuated to the point by which the excrescence is attached to the leaf.[690] But though the form is thus variable, the structure of these bodi4s is very characteristic. They are striated towards the base, and completely covered on other parts with a thick, velvety, grey down, which rubbed off on the prominences, displays the reddish-brown colour of the shell itself. The latter is ⅒ to ¹/₂₀ of an inch in thickness, translucent and horny, but brittle with a smooth and shining fracture. It is rather smoother on the inner surface and of lighter colour than on the outer.

[687] Pharm. Journ. vii. (1848) 310.

[688] Ibid. x. (1851) 128.

[689] Stanisl. Julien et P. Champion, Industries anc. et modernes de l’Empire chinois, 1869. 95.

[690] We have once met with galls imported from Shanghai which differed from ordinary Chinese galls in not being horned, but all of an elongated ovoid form, often pointed at the upper end, and having moreover a strong cheesy smell. They may be derived from Distylium racemosum S. et Z., though they do not perfectly accord with the depressed pear-shaped forms figured by Siebold and Zuccarini (Flora Japonica, tab. 94).

The galls when broken are generally found to contain a white, downy-looking substance, together with the minute, dried-up bodies of the killed insect.[691]

The drug as imported from Japan is usually a little smaller and paler; it mostly fetches a better price in the market.

=Microscopic Structure=—The tissue of the galls is made up of thin-walled, large cells irregularly traversed by small vascular bundles and laticiferous vessels. The latter are mostly not branched. The parenchyme is loaded with lumps of tannic matter and starch, the latter having mostly lost by the treatment with boiling water its granular appearance. The epidermis of the galls is covered with little tapering hairs, consisting each of 1-5 cells, to which is due the velvety down of the drug.

=Chemical Composition=—Chinese or Japanese galls contain about 70 per cent. of a tannic acid, which has been first shown by Stein in 1849 to be identical with that derived from oak galls (see Gallæ halepenses), the so-called gallo-tannic or common tannic acid.[692] It is remarkable that this substance, which is by no means widely distributed, is also present in Rhus coriaria, a species indigenous in the Mediterranean region. Its leaves and shoots are the well-known dyeing and tanning material Sumach.

Stein, however, pointed out at the same time, that in Chinese galls gallo-tannic acid is accompanied by a small amount, about 4 per cent., of a different tannic matter.

=Commerce=—At present the supplies arrive chiefly from Hankow, from which great trading city the export, in 1872, was no less than 30,949 peculs, equal to 36,844 cwt; 21,611 peculs, value 136,214 taels (one tael about 6_s._) in 1874. In 1877 all China exported not more than 17,515 peculs. A little is also shipped from Canton and Ningpo.[693] The quantity imported from China into the United Kingdom in 1872 was 8621 cwts., valued at £20,098. In the China trade returns, the drug is always miscalled “Nut galls,” or “gallnuts.” Only those called “Wu-pei-tze” are the galls under examination. There are also oak galls exported from China resembling those from Western Asia. Japanese galls, “Kifushi,” are shipped in increasing quantities at Hiogo.[694]

=Uses=—The galls under notice are employed, chiefly in Germany, for the manufacture of tannic acid, gallic acid, and pyrogallol.

[691] See also Schenk, in Buchner’s Repertorium für Pharm. v. (1850) 26-27, or short abstract of that paper in the Jahresbericht of Wiggers, 1850. 48.

[692] See also Stenhouse, Proceedings of the Royal Society, xi. (1862) 402.

[693] Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports of China, for 1872. 154; for 1874.

[694] Matsugata, Le Japon à l’Exposition universelle (Paris, 1878) 116. 146.

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LEGUMINOSÆ

HERBA SCOPARII.

Cacumina vel Summitates Scoparii; Broom Tops; F. Genêt à balais; G. Besenginster, Pfriemenkraut.

=Botanical Origin=—Cytisus Scoparius Link (Spartium Scoparium L., Sarothamnus vulgaris Wimmer), the Common Broom, a woody shrub, 3 to 6 feet high, grows gregariously in sandy thickets and uncultivated places throughout Great Britain, and Western and temperate Northern Europe. In continental Europe it is plentiful in the valley of the Rhine up to the Swiss frontier, in Southern Germany and in Silesia, but does not ascend the Alps, and is absent from many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Polonia for instance. According to Ledebour, it is found in Central and Southern Russia and on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains. In Southern Europe its place is supplied by other species.

=History=—From the fact that this plant is chiefly a native of Western, Northern and Central Europe, it is improbable that the classical authors were acquainted with it; and for the same reason the remarks of the early Italian writers may not always apply to the species under notice. With this reservation, we may state that broom under the name Genista, Genesta, or Genestra is mentioned in the earliest printed herbals, as that of Passau,[695] 1485, the Hortus Sanitatis, 1491, the Great Herbal printed at Southwark in 1526, and others. It is likewise the Genista as figured and described by the German botanists and pharmacologists of the 16th century, like Brunfels, Fuchs, Tragus, Valerius Cordus (“Genista angulosa”) and others. Broom was used in ancient Anglo-Saxon medicine[696] as well as in the Welsh “Meddygon Myddvai.” It had a place in the London Pharmacopœia of 1618, and has been included in nearly every subsequent edition. Hieronymus Brunschwyg gives[697] directions for distilling a water from the flowers, “flores genestæ”—a medicine which Gerarde relates was used by King Henry VIII. “against surfets and diseases thereof arising.”

Broom was the emblem of those of the Norman sovereigns of England descended from Geoffrey the “Handsome,” or “Plantagenet” count of Anjou (obiit A.D. 1150), who was in the habit of wearing the common broom of his country, the “planta genista,” in his helmet.

=Description=—The Common Broom has numerous straight ascending wiry branches, sharply 5-angled and devoid of spines. The leaves, of which the largest are barely an inch long, consist of 3 obovate leaflets on a petiole of their own length. Towards the extremities of the twigs, the leaves are much scattered and generally reduced to a single ovate leaflet, nearly sessile. The leaves when young are clothed on both sides with long reddish hairs; these under the microscope are seen each to consist of a simple cylindrical thin-walled cell, the surface of which is beset with numerous extremely small protuberances.

[695] Herbarius, Patavie 1485.

[696] Cockayne Leechdoms, &c., iii. (1866) 316.

[697] De arte distillandi, first edition 1500, Argentorati, cap. xv.

The large, bright yellow, odorous flowers, which become brown in drying, are mostly solitary in the axils of the leaves; they have a persistent campanulate calyx divided into two lips minutely toothed, and a long subulate style, curved round on itself. The legume is oblong compressed, 1½ to 2 inches long by about ½ an inch wide, fringed with hairs along the edge. It contains 10 to 12 olive-coloured albuminous seeds, the funicle of which is expanded into a large fleshy strophiole. They have a bitterish taste, and are devoid of starch.

The portion of the plant used in pharmacy is the younger herbaceous branches, which are required both fresh and dried. In the former state they emit when bruised a peculiar odour which is lost in drying. They have a nauseous bitter taste.

=Chemical Composition=—Stenhouse[698] discovered in broom tops two interesting principles, Scoparin, C₂₁H₂₂O₁₀, an indifferent or somewhat acid body, and the alkaloid Sparteine, C₁₅H₂₆N₂, the first soluble in water or spirit and crystallizing in yellowish tufts, the second a colourless oily liquid heavier than water and sparingly soluble in it, boiling at 288° C.

To obtain scoparin, a watery decoction of the plant is concentrated so as to form a jelly after standing for a day or two. This is then washed with a small quantity of cold water, dissolved in hot water and again allowed to repose. By repeating this treatment with the addition of a little hydrochloric acid, the chlorophyll may at length be separated and the scoparin obtained as a gelatinous mass, which dries as an amorphous, brittle, pale yellow, neutral substance, devoid of taste and smell. Its solution in hot alcohol deposits it partly in crystals and partly as jelly, which after drying are alike in composition. Hlasiwetz showed (1866) that scoparin when melted with potash is resolved, like kino or quercetin, into Phloroglucin, C₆H₆O₃, and Protocatechuic Acid, 2 C₇H₆O₄.

The acid mother-liquors from which scoparin has been obtained when concentrated and distilled with soda, yield besides ammonia a very bitter oily liquid, Sparteine. To obtain it pure, it requires to be repeatedly rectified, dried by chloride of calcium, and distilled in a current of dry carbonic acid. It is colourless, but becomes brown by exposure to light; it has at first an odour of aniline, but this is altered by rectification. Sparteine has a decidedly alkaline reaction and readily neutralises acids, forming crystallizable salts which are extremely bitter. Conine, nicotine, and sparteine are the only volatile alkaloids devoid of oxygen hitherto known to exist in the vegetable kingdom.

Mills[699] extracted sparteine simply by acidulated water which he concentrated and then distilled with soda. The distillate was then saturated with hydrochloric acid, evaporated to dryness, and submitted to distillation with potash. The oily sparteine thus obtained was dried by prolonged heating with sodium in a current of hydrogen, and finally rectified per se. Mills succeeded in replacing one or two equivalents of the hydrogen of sparteine by one or two of C₂H₅ (ethyl). From 150 lb. the (dried?) plant, he obtained 22 cubic centimetres of sparteine, which we may estimate as equivalent to about ½ per mille.

[698] Phil. Trans. 1851. 422-431.

[699] Journ. of Chem. Soc. xv. (1862) l.; Gmelin’s Chem. xvi. (1864) 282.

Stenhouse ascertained that the amount of sparteine and scoparin depends much on external conditions, broom grown in the shade yielding less than that produced in open sunny places. He states that shepherds are well aware of the shrub possessing narcotic properties, from having observed their sheep to become stupified and excited when occasionally compelled to eat it.

The experiments of Reinsch (1846) tend to show that broom contains a bitter crystallizible principle in addition to the foregoing. The seeds of the allied Cytisus Laburnum L. afford two highly poisonous alkaloids, Cytisine and Laburnine, discovered by A. Husemann and Marmé in 1865.

=Uses=—A decoction of broom tops, made from the dried herb, is used as a diuretic and purgative. The juice of the fresh plant, preserved by the addition of alcohol, is also administered and is regarded as a very efficient preparation.

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SEMEN FŒNI GRÆCI

Semen Fœnugræci; Fenugreek; F. Semences de Fenugrec; G. Bockshornsamen.

=Botanical Origin=—Trigonella Fœnum græcum L., an erect, sub-glabrous, annual plant, 1 to 2 feet high, with solitary, subsessile, whitish flowers; indigenous to the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, in which it has been long cultivated, and whence it appears to have spread to India.

=History=—In the old Egyptian preparation Kyphi, an ingredient “Sebes or Sebtu” is mentioned, which is thought by Ebers to mean fenugreek. This plant was well known to the Roman writers on husbandry, as Porcius Cato (B.C. 234-149) who calls it Fœnum Græcum and directs it to be sown as fodder for oxen. It is the τῇλις of Dioscorides and other Greek writers. Its mucilaginous seeds, “siliquæ” of the Roman peasants, were valued as an aliment and condiment for man, and as such are still largely consumed in the East. They were likewise supposed to possess many medicinal virtues, and had a place in the pharmacopœias of the last century.

The cultivation of fenugreek in Central Europe was encouraged by Charlemagne (A.D. 812), and the plant was grown in English gardens in the 16th century.

=Description=—The fenugreek plant has a sickle-shaped pod, 3 to 4 inches long, containing 10 to 20 hard, brownish-yellow seeds, having the smell and taste which is characteristic of peas and beans, with addition of a cumarin-or melilot-flavour.

The seeds are about ⅛ of an inch long, with a rhomboid outline, often shrivelled and distorted; they are somewhat compressed, with the hilum on the sharper edge, and a deep furrow running from it and almost dividing the seed into two unequal lobes. When the seed is macerated in warm water, its structure becomes easily visible. The testa bursts by the swelling of the internal membrane or endopleura, which like a thick gelatinous sac encloses the cotyledons and their very large hooked radicle.

=Microscopic Structure=—The most interesting structural peculiarity of this seed arises from the fact that the mucilage with which it abounds is not yielded by the cells of the epidermis, but by a loose tissue closely surrounding the embryo.[700]

=Chemical Composition=—The cells of the testa contain tannin; the cotyledons a yellow colouring matter, but no sugar. The air-dried seeds give off 10 per cent. of water at 100° C., and on subsequent incineration leave 7 per cent. of ash, of which nearly a fourth is phosphoric acid.

Ether extracts from the pulverized seeds 6 per cent. of a fœtid, fatty oil, having a bitter taste. Amylic alcohol removes in addition a small quantity of resin. Alcohol added to a concentrated aqueous extract, forms a precipitate of mucilage, amounting when dried to 28 per cent. Burnt with soda-lime, the seeds yielded to Jahns[701] 3·4 per cent. of nitrogen, equivalent to 22 per cent. of albumin. No researches have been yet made to determine the nature of the odorous principle.

=Production and Commerce=—Fenugreek is cultivated in Morocco, in the south of France near Montpellier, in a few places in Switzerland, in Alsace, and in some other provinces of the German and Austrian empires, as Thuringia and Moravia. It is produced on a far larger scale in Egypt, where it is known by the Arabic name Hulba, and whence it is exported to Europe and India. In 1873 it was stated that the profits of the European growers were much reduced by the seed being largely exported from Mogador and Bombay.

Under the Sanscrit name of Methi, which has passed, slightly modified, into several of the modern Indian languages, fenugreek is much grown in the plains of India during the cool season. In the year 1872-73, the quantity of seed exported from Sind to Bombay was 13,646 cwt., valued at £4,405.[702] From the port of Bombay there were shipped in the same year 9,655 cwt., of which only 100 cwt. are reported as for the United Kingdom.[703]

=Uses=—In Europe fenugreek as a medicine is obsolete, but the powdered seeds are still often sold by chemists for veterinary pharmacy and as an ingredient of curry powder. The chief consumption is, however, in the so-called Cattle Foods.

The fresh plant in India is commonly eaten as a green vegetable, while the seeds are extensively used by the natives in food and medicine.

[700] Figured by Lanessan in his French translation of the Pharmacographia, i. (1878) 345.

[701] Experiments performed in my laboratory in 1867.—F. A. F.

[702] Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of Sind, for the year 1872-73, printed at Karachi, 1873. p. 36.

[703] Annual Statement, etc., Bombay, 1873. 89.

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