FOLIA HYOSCYAMI…

FOLIA HYOSCYAMI

Henbane Leaves; F. Feuilles de Jusquiame; G. Bilsenkraut.

=Botanical Origin=—Hyoscyamus niger L., a coarse, erect herb, with soft, viscid, hairy foliage of unpleasant odour, pale yellowish flowers elegantly marked with purple veins, and 5-toothed bottle-shaped calyx. It is found throughout Europe from Portugal and Greece to Central Norway and Finland, in Egypt, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Persia, Siberia and Northern India. As a weed of cultivation it now grows also in North America[1693] and Brazil. In Britain it occurs wild, chiefly in waste places near buildings; and is cultivated for medicinal use.

Henbane exists under two varieties, known as annual and biennial, but scarcely presenting any other distinctive character.

Biennial Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger var. α. biennis) is most esteemed for pharmaceutical preparations. It is raised by seed, the plant producing the first year only a rosette of luxuriant stalked leaves, 12 or more inches in length. In the second, it throws up a flower stem of 2 to 3 feet in height, and the whole plant dies as the fruit matures.

Annual Henbane (H. niger var. β. annua, vel agrestis) is a smaller plant, coming to perfection in a single season. It is the usual wild form, but it is also grown by the herbalists.[1694]

=History=—Hyoscyamus, under which name it is probable the nearly allied South European species, H. albus L., was generally intended, was medicinal among the ancients, and particularly commended by Dioscorides.

In Europe, henbane has been employed from remote times. Benedictus Crispus, archbishop of Milan, in a work written shortly before A.D. 681, notices it under the name of Hyoscyamus and Symphoniaca.[1695] In the 10th century, its virtues were particularly recorded by Macer Floridus[1696] who called it Jusquiamus.

[1693] It had become naturalized in North America prior to 1672, as we find it mentioned by Josselyn in his New England’s Rarities discovered (Lond. 1672) among the plants “sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England.”

[1694] Pharm. Journ. i. (1860) 414.

[1695] S. de Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, Napoli, i. (1852) 74. 84.

[1696] De Viribus Herbarum, edited by Choulant, Lips. 1832. 108.

Frequent mention is made of it in the Anglo-Saxon works on medicine of the 11th century,[1697] in which it is called Henbell, and sometimes Belene, the latter word perhaps traceable in βιλινουντία, which Dioscorides[1698] gives as the Gallic designation of the plant. In the 13th century henbane was also used by the Welsh “Physicians of Myddvai.”

The word Hennibone, with the Latin and French synonyms Jusquiamus and Chenille, occurs in a vocabulary of the 13th century; and Hennebane in a Latin and English vocabulary of the 15th century.[1699] In the Arbolayre, a printed French herbal of the 15th century,[1700] we find the plant described as Hanibane or Hanebane with the following explanation—“Elle est aultrement appeler cassilago et aultrement simphoniaca. La semence proprement a nom jusquiame ou hanebane, et herbe a nom cassilago....” Both Hyoscyamus and Jusquiamus are from the Greek Ὑοσκύαμος, i.e. Hog-bean.

Though a remedy undeniably potent, henbane in the first half of the last century had fallen into disuse. It was omitted from the London pharmacopœias of 1746 and 1788, and restored only in 1809. Its re-introduction into medicine was chiefly due to the experiments and recommendations of Störck.[1701]

During the middle ages the seeds and roots of henbane were also much used.

=Description=—The stems of henbane, whether of the annual or biennial form, are clothed with soft, viscid, hairy leaves, of which the upper constitute the large, sessile, coarsely toothed bracts of the unilateral flower-spike. The middle leaves are more toothed and subamplexicaul. The lower leaves are stalked, ovate-oblong, coarsely dentate, and of large size. The stems, leaves, and calyces of henbane are thickly beset with long, soft, jointed hairs; the last joint of many of these hairs exudes a viscid substance occasioning the fresh plant to feel clammy to the touch. In the cultivated plant, the hairiness diminishes.

After drying, the broad light-coloured midrib becomes very conspicuous, while the rest of the leaf shrinks much and acquires a greyish green hue. The drug derived from the flowering plant as found in commerce is usually much broken. The fœtid, narcotic odour of the fresh leaves is greatly diminished by drying. The fresh plant has but little taste.

Dried henbane is sold under three forms, which are not however generally distinguished by druggists. These are 1. Annual plant, foliage and green tops. 2. Biennial plant, leaves of the first year. 3. Biennial plant, foliage and green tops. The third form is always regarded as the best, but no attempt has been made to determine with accuracy the relative merits of the three sorts.

[1697] Leechdoms etc. of Early England, iii. (1866) 313.

[1698] Lib. iv. c. 69. (ed. Sprengel).

[1699] Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, 1857. 141. 265.

[1700] See p. 148, note 3, also Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, i. (1860) 377.

[1701] See p. 459, note 5.

=Chemical Composition=—Hyoscyamine, the most important among the constituents of henbane, was obtained in an impure state by Geiger and Hesse in 1833. Höhn in 1871 first isolated it from the seeds, which are far richer in it than the leaves.[1702] The seeds are deprived of the fatty oil (26 per cent.) and treated with spirit of wine containing sulphuric acid, which takes out the hyoscyamine in the form of sulphate. The alcohol is then evaporated and tannic acid added; the precipitate thus obtained is mixed with lime and exhausted with alcohol. The hyoscyamine is again converted into a sulphate, the aqueous solution of which is then precipitated with carbonate of sodium, and the alkaloid dissolved by means of ether. After the evaporation of the ether, hyoscyamine remains as an oily liquid which after some time concretes into wart-like tufted crystals, soluble in benzol, chloroform, ether, as well as in water. Höhn and Reichardt assign to hyoscyamine the formula C₁₅H₂₃O₃. The seeds yield of it only 0·05 per cent.

Hyoscyamine is easily decomposed by caustic alkalis. By boiling with baryta in aqueous solution, it is split into Hyoscine, C₆H₁₃N, and Hyoscinic Acid, C₉H₁₀O₃. The former is a volatile oily liquid of a narcotic odour and alkaline reaction. By keeping it over sulphuric acid it crystallizes and also yields crystallized salts; hyoscine may be closely allied to conine, C₈H₁₅N. Hyoscinic acid, a crystallizable substance having an odour resembling that of empyreumatic benzoic acid.[1703] It melts, according to Höhn, at 105°; tropic acid (see p. 457), melting at 118°, agrees so very nearly with hyoscinic acid that further researches will probably prove these acids to be identical.

Another process for extracting hyoscyamine is due (1875) to Thibaut. He removes by bisulphide of carbon the fatty oil from the powdered seeds, and exhausts them with alcohol slightly acidulated by tartaric acid. The alcohol being distilled off, the author precipitates the alkaloid by means of a solution containing 6 per cent. of iodide of potassium and 3 per cent. iodine. By decomposing the precipitate with sulphurous acid, hydroiodic acid and sulphate of hyoscyamine are formed. The latter is dried up at 35° with magnesia and the hyoscyamine extracted by alcohol or chloroform. The crystals melt at 90°. Thibaut found the alkaloid thus prepared from seeds differing from that yielded by the leaves, the latter having a somewhat strong odour.

Attfield[1704] has pointed out that extract of henbane is rich in nitrate of potassium and other inorganic salts. In the leaves, the amount of nitrate is, according to Thorey,[1705] largest before flowering, and the same observation applies to hyoscyamine.

=Uses=—Henbane in the form of tincture or extract is administered as a sedative, anodyne or hypnotic. The impropriety of giving it in conjunction with free potash or soda, which render it perfectly inert, has been demonstrated by the experiments of Garrod.[1706] Hyoscyamine, like atropine, powerfully dilates the pupil of the eye.

[1702] From the experiments of Schoonbroodt (1868), there is reason to believe that the active principle of henbane can be more easily extracted from the fresh than from the dried plant.

[1703] I have had the opportunity of examining the above substances as prepared by the said chemists.—F. A. F. July 1871.

[1704] Pharm. Journ. iii. (1862) 447.

[1705] Wiggers and Husemann, Jahresbericht, 1869. 56.

[1706] Pharm. Journ. xvii. (1858) 462; xviii. (1859) 174.

=Substitutes=—Hyoscyamus albus L., a more slender plant than H. niger L., with stalked leaves and bracts, a native of the Mediterranean region, is sometimes used in the south of Europe as medicinal henbane. H. insanus Stocks, a plant of Beluchistan, is mentioned in the Pharmacopœia of India as of considerable virulence, and sometimes used for smoking.

FOLIA TABACI.

Herba Nicotianæ; Tobacco; F. Tabac; G. Tabakblätter.

=Botanical Origin=—Nicotiana Tabacum L.—The common Tobacco plant is a native of the New World, though not now known in a wild state. Its cultivation is carried on in most temperate and subtropical countries.

=History=—It is stated by C. Ph. von Martius[1707] that the practice of smoking tobacco has been widely diffused from time immemorial among the natives of South America, as well as among the inhabitants of the valley of the Mississippi as far north as the plant can be cultivated.

The Spaniards became acquainted with tobacco when they landed in Cuba in 1492, and on their return introduced it into Europe for the sake of its medicinal properties. The custom of inhaling the smoke of the herb was learnt from the Indians, and by the end of the 16th century had become generally known throughout Spain and Portugal, whence it passed into the rest of Europe, and into Turkey, Egypt, and India, notwithstanding that it was opposed by the severest enactments both of Christian and Mahommedan governments. It is commonly believed that the practice of smoking tobacco was much promoted in England, as well as in the north of Europe generally, by the example of Sir Walter Raleigh and his companions.

Tobacco was introduced into China, probably by way of Japan or Manila, during the 16th or 17th century, but its use was prohibited by the emperors both of the Ming and Tsing dynasties. It is now cultivated in most of the provinces, and is universally employed.[1708]

The first tolerably exact description of the tobacco plant is that given by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, governor of St. Domingo, in his Historia general de las Indias,[1709] printed at Seville in 1535. In this work, the plant is said to be smoked through a branched tube of the shape of the letter =Y=, which the natives call Tabaco.

It was not until the middle of the 16th century that growing tobacco was seen in Europe,—first at Lisbon, whence the French ambassador, Jean Nicot, sent seeds to France in 1560 as those of a valuable medicinal plant, which was even then diffused throughout Portugal.[1710]

Monardes,[1711] writing in 1571, speaks of tobacco as brought to Spain a few years previously, and valued for its beauty and for its medicinal virtues. Of the latter he gives a long account, noticing also the methods of smoking and chewing the herb prevalent among the Indians. He also supplies a small woodcut representing the plant, which he states to have white flowers, red in the centre.

[1707] Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Americas, zumal Brasiliens, i. (1867) 719.

[1708] Mayers in Hong Kong Notes and Queries, May, 1867; F. P. Smith, Mat. Med. and Nat. Hist. of China, 1871. 219.

[1709] Lib. v. c. 2.

[1710] Nicot, Thrésor de la langue Françoyse, Paris, 1606. 429.

[1711] Segunda parte del libro de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales, que sirven al uso de medicina. Do se trata del Tabaco ..., Sevilla, 1571, 3.

Jacques Gohory,[1712] who cultivated the plant in Paris at least as early as 1572, describes its flowers as shaded with red, and enumerates various medicinal preparations made from it.

In the Maison Rustique of Charles Estienne, edition of 1583, the author gives a “Discours sur la Nicotiane ou Petum mascle,” in which he claims for the plant the first place among medicinal herbs, on account of its singular and almost divine virtues.

The cultivation of tobacco in England, except on a very small scale in a physic garden, has been prohibited by law[1713] since 1660.

=Description=—Amongst the various species of Nicotiana cultivated for the manufacturing of smoking tobacco and snuff, N. Tabacum is by far the most frequent, and is almost the only one named in the pharmacopœias as medicinal. Its simple stem, bearing at the summit a panicle of tubular pink flowers, and growing to the height of a man, has oblong, lanceolate simple leaves, with the margin entire. The lower leaves, more broadly lanceolate, and about 2 feet long by 6 inches wide, are shortly stalked. The stem-leaves are semi-amplexicaul, and decurrent at the base. Cultivation sometimes produces cordate-ovate forms of leaf, or a margin more or less uneven, or nearly revolute.

All the herbaceous parts of the plant are clothed with long soft hairs, made up of broad, ribbon-like, striated cells, the points of which exude a glutinous liquid. Small sessile glands are situated here and there on the surface of the leaf.[1714] The lateral veins proceed from the thick midrib in straight lines, at angles of 40° to 75°, gently curving upwards only near the edge. In drying, the leaves become brittle and as thin as paper, and always acquire a brown colour. Even by the most careful treatment of a single leaf, it is not possible to preserve the green hue.

The smell of the fresh plant is narcotic; its taste bitter and nauseous. The characteristic odour of dried tobacco is developed during the process of curing.

=Chemical Composition=—The active principle of tobacco, first isolated in 1828 by Posselt and Reimann, is a volatile, highly poisonous alkaloid termed Nicotine, C₁₀H₁₄N₂. It is easily extracted from tobacco by means of alcohol or water, as a malate, from which the alkaloid can be separated by shaking it with caustic lye and ether. The ether is then expelled by warming the liquid, which finally has to be mixed with slaked lime and distilled in a stream of hydrogen, when the nicotine begins to come over at about 200° C.

[1712] Instruction sur l’herbe Petum ditte en France l’herbe de la Royne ou Médicée ... Paris, 1572.

[1713] 12 Car. II. c. 34; 15 Car. II. c. 7.—For further information on the history of tobacco, see Tiedemann, Geschichte des Tabaks, Frankfurt, 1854.—We have not consulted Fairholt, Tobacco, its History, Lond. 1859.

[1714] Microscopic structure of tobacco leaves. See Pocklington, Pharm. Journal, v. (1874) 301.

Nicotine is a colourless oily liquid, of sp. gr. 1·027 at 15° C., deviating the plane of polarization to the left; it boils at 247° and does not concrete even at -10° C. It has a strongly alkaline reaction, an unpleasant odour, and a burning taste. It quickly assumes a brown colour on exposure to air and light; and appears even to undergo an alteration by repeated distillation in an atmosphere deprived of oxygen. Nicotine dissolves in water, but separates on addition of caustic potash; it occurs in the dried leaves to the extent of about 6 per cent., but is subject to great variation. The seeds of tobacco are stated by Kosutany[1715] as grown in Hungary to contain from 0·28 to 0·67 per cent. of the alkaloid.

It has not been met with in tobacco-smoke by Vohl and Eulenberg (1871), though other chemists assert its occurrence. The vapours were found by the former to contain numerous basic substances of the picolinic series, and ceded to caustic potash, hydrocyanic acid,[1716] sulphuretted hydrogen, several volatile fatty acids, phenol and creasote. There was further observed in the imperfect combustion of tobacco the formation of laminæ fusible at 94° C., and having a composition C₁₉H₁₈. Oxide of carbon is also largely met with.

Tobacco leaves, whether fresh or dried, yield when distilled with water a turbid distillate in which, as observed by Hermbstädt in 1823, there are formed, after some days, crystals of Nicotianin or Tobacco Camphor. According to J. A. Barral, nicotianin contains 7·12 per cent. of nitrogen (?). By submitting 4 kilogrammes of good tobacco of the previous year to distillation with much water, we obtained nicotianin, floating on the surface of the distillate, in the form of minute acicular crystals, which we found to be devoid of action on polarized light. The crystals have no peculiar taste, at least in the small quantity we tried; they have a tobacco-like smell, perhaps simply due to the water adhering to them. When an attempt was made to separate them by a filter, they entirely disappeared, being probably dissolved by an accompanying trace of essential oil. The clear water showed an alkaline reaction partly due to nicotine; this was proved by adding a solution of tannic acid, which caused a well-marked turbidity. Nicotianine is in our opinion a fatty acid contaminated with a little volatile oil as in the case of Capsicum (see page 454), or Iris (see article Rhizome Iridis).

Among the ordinary constituents of leaves, tobacco contains albumin, resin and gum. In smoking, these substances, as well as the cellulose of the thick midrib, would yield products not agreeable to the consumer. The manufacturer therefore discards the midrib, and endeavours by further preparation to ensure at least the partial destruction of these unwelcome constituents, as well as the formation of certain products of fermentation (ferment-oils), which may perhaps contribute to the aroma of tobacco, especially when saccharine substances, liquorice, or alcohol, are added in the maceration to which tobacco is subjected.

Tobacco leaves are remarkably rich in inorganic constituents, the proportion varying from 16 to 27 per cent. According to Boussingault, they contain when dry about 1 per cent. of phosphoric acid, and from 3 to 5 per cent. of potash, together with 2½ to 4½ per cent. of nitrogen partly in the form of nitrate, so that to enable the tobacco plant to flourish, it must have a rich soil or continual manuring.[1717]

[1715] Dragendorff’s Jahresbericht, 1874. 98.

[1716] Poggiale and Marty (1870) stated hydrocyanic acid to be absent.

[1717] For further particulars on the chemistry of tobacco cultivation see Boussingault, Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. ix. (1866) 50.

The lime, amounting to between a quarter and a half of the entire quantity of ash, is in the leaf combined with organic acids, especially malic, perhaps also citric. The proportion of potash varies greatly, but may amount to about 30 per cent. of the ash.

=Commerce=—There were imported into the United Kingdom in the year 1872, 45,549,700 lb. of unmanufactured tobacco, rather more than half of which was derived from the United States of America. The total value of the commodity thus imported was £1,563,382; and the duty levied upon the quantity retained for home consumption amounted to £6,694,037. In 1876 the consumption of tobacco had increased to 47,000,000 lb., i.e. 1½ lb. per head of the population.

In the United States 559,049 acres of land being in 1875 under cultivation with tobacco yielded a crop of 367,000,000 lb.

=Uses=—Tobacco has some reputation in the removal of alvine obstructions, but it is a medicine of great potency and is very rarely used.

=Substitutes=—Of the other species of Nicotiana cultivated as Tobacco, N. rustica L. is probably the most extensively grown. It is easily distinguished by its greenish yellow flowers, and its stalked ovate leaves. In spite of their coarser texture, the leaves dry more easily than those of N. Tabacum, and with some care may even be made to retain their green colour. N. rustica furnishes East Indian Tobacco, also the kinds known as Latakia and Turkish Tobacco.

N. persica Lindl. yields the tobacco of Shiraz. N. quadrivalvis Pursh, N. multivalvis Lindl. and N. repanda Willd. are also cultivated plants, the last named, a plant of Havana, being used in the manufacture of a much valued kind of cigar.

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SCROPHULARIACEÆ

FOLIA DIGITALIS.

Foxglove Leaves; F. Feuilles de Digitale; G. Fingerhutblätter.

=Botanical Origin=—Digitalis purpurea L., an elegant and stately plant, common throughout the greater part of Europe, but preferring siliceous soils and generally absent from limestone districts. It is found on the edges of woods and thickets, on bushy ground and commons, becoming a mountain plant in the warm parts of Europe. It occurs in the island of Madeira, in Portugal, Central and Southern Spain, Northern Italy, France, Germany, the British Isles and Southern Sweden, and in Norway as far as 63° N. lat.; it is however very unequally distributed, and is altogether wanting in the Swiss Alps and the Jura.[1718] As a garden plant it is well known.

=History=—The Welsh “Physicians of Myddvai” appear to have frequently made use of foxglove for the preparation of external medicines.[1719] Fuchs[1720] and Tragus[1721] figured the plant; the former gave it the name of Digitalis, remarking that up to the time at which he wrote, there was none for the plant in either Greek or Latin. At that period it was regarded as a violent medicine. Parkinson recommended it in 1640 in the “Theatrum botanicum,” and it had a place in the London Pharmacopœia of 1650 and in several subsequent editions. The investigation of its therapeutic powers (1776-9) and its introduction into modern practice are chiefly due to Withering, a well-known English botanist and physician.[1722]

[1718] Dr. R. Cunningham found (1868) Digitalis purpurea completely naturalized about San Carlos in the Island of Chiloe in Southern Chili.

[1719] Meddygon Myddfai (see Appendix) in many places.

[1720] De Hist. Stirpium, 1542. 892.

[1721] De Stirpium ... nomenclaturis, etc. 1552—“Campanula sylvestris seu Digitalis.”

[1722] Withering (William), Account of the Foxglove, Birmingham, 1785. 8°.

The word foxglove is said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon Foxes-glew, i.e. fox-music, in allusion to an ancient musical instrument consisting of bells hung on an arched support.[1723] In the Scandinavian idioms the plant bears likewise the name of foxes bell.

=Description=—Foxglove is a biennial or perennial, the leaves of which ought to be taken from the plant while in full flower. The lower leaves are ovate with the lamina running down into a long stalk; those of the stem become gradually narrower, passing into ovate-lanceolate with a short broadly-winged stalk, or are sessile. All have the margin crenate, crenate-dentate, or sub-serrate, are more or less softly pubescent or nearly glabrous on the upper side, much paler and densely pubescent on the under, which is marked with a prominent network of veins. The principal veins diverge at a very acute angle from the midrib, which is thick and fleshy. The lower leaves are often a foot or more long, by 5 to 6 inches broad; those of the stem are smaller.

When magnified, the tip of each crenature or serrature of the leaf is seen to be provided with a small, shining, wart-like gland. The hairs of the lower surface are simple, and composed of jointed cells which flatten in drying; those of the upper surface are shorter.

In preparing foxglove for medicinal use, it is the custom of some druggists to remove the whole of the petiole and the thicker part of the midrib, retaining only the thin lamina, which is dried with a gentle heat.[1724] The fresh leaf has when bruised an unpleasant herbaceous smell, which in drying becomes agreeable and tea-like. The dried leaf has a very bitter taste.

=Chemical Composition=—Since the beginning of the present century, numerous attempts have been made to prepare the active principle of foxglove, and the name Digitalin has been successively bestowed on widely different substances.

Among the investigators engaged in these researches, we may point out Walz (1846-1858), Kosmann (1845-46, 1860), Homolle partly with Quévenne (1845-61), Nativelle (1872), and especially Schmiedeberg (1874).[1725] The latter has prepared a new, well-defined, crystallizable principle, Digitoxin, from Digitalis. He exhausted with water the leaves previously dried and powdered, and then extracted them repeatedly with dilute alcohol, 50 per cent.; the tincture thus obtained was then mixed with basic acetate of lead as long as it produced a precipitate. The latter being separated, the filtered liquid was concentrated and the deposit now formed, after some days, removed from the aqueous liquid. It was then washed with a dilute solution of carbonate of sodium, by which a yellow matter (chrysophan?) was partly removed. The substance was then dried, and yielded to chloroform a brownish mass, which after the chloroform had been driven off, was purified by benzin. This liquid dissolved the remainder of the yellow or orange matter, and a little fat, leaving crude digitoxin, which is to be purified by recrystallization from warm alcohol, 80 per cent., adding a little charcoal. This purification still yields yellowish crystals, which ought to be washed again with carbonate of sodium, ether or benzin, and then recrystallized from warm absolute alcohol, containing a little chloroform. This process, however, will only afford colourless crystals provided it be so performed as to cause the separation of digitoxin on account of the cooling of the solution, not by the evaporation of the solvent. If the liquid is instead allowed to evaporate it will soon assume a darker coloration. In the way just pointed out, perfectly colourless scales or needle-shaped crystals of pure digitoxin are at length formed, the yield being not more considerable than about one part from 10,000 of dried leaves.

[1723] Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, ed. 2. 1870. 84.

[1724] This method of preparing the leaf was directed in the London Pharmacopœia of 1851, but it had long been in use. No particular directions are given in the British Pharmacopœia.

[1725] For further particulars on Schmiedeberg’s very elaborate researches, the reader may consult my abstract of them in Pharm. Journ. v. (1875) 741.—F. A. F..

Digitoxin is insoluble in water, to which it does not even impart its intensely bitter taste as displayed in the alcoholic solution. It is likewise insoluble in benzin or bisulphide of carbon, very sparingly soluble in ether, more abundantly so in chloroform, the latter liquid however acting but very slowly on digitoxin. Its best solvent is alcohol, either cold or warm. The composition of digitoxin answers to the formula, C₃₁H₃₃O₇.

Digitoxin warmed with concentrated hydrochloric acid assumes a yellow or greenish hue, the same which is commonly attributed to commercial “digitalin.” Digitoxin is not a saccharogenous matter; in alcoholic solution it is decomposed by dilute acids, and then affords Toxiresin, an uncrystallizable, yellowish substance, which may easily be separated on account of its ready solubility in ether; it appears to be produced also if digitoxin is maintained for some time in the state of fusion at about 240° C. Toxiresin proved to be a very powerful poison, acting energetically on the heart and muscles of frogs. The very specific action of foxglove is due—not exclusively—to digitoxin; it is so highly poisonous that Schmiedeberg thinks it not at all fit for medicinal use, which might rather be confined to other constituents of foxglove, as, for instance, to those obtained from the seeds under the names of digitalin and digitaléin. The latter, however, are of more difficult extraction than digitoxin.

The preparation of digitoxin is similar to that of Nativelle’s crystallized “digitalin;” the former as well as paradigitogenin[1726] are largely found in Nativelle’s digitalin.

[1726] A derivative of digitoxin as extracted by Schmiedeberg from the seeds of foxglove.

The Digitalin of Nativelle—The researches on digitalis of this chemist, for which the Orfila prize of 6000 francs was awarded in 1872, have resulted in the extraction of a crystallized preparation possessing active medicinal properties. It may be obtained by the following process:—

The leaves, previously exhausted by water, are extracted by means of alcohol, sp. gr. ·930. The tincture is concentrated until its weight is equal to that of the leaves used, and then diluted by adding thrice its weight of water. A pitch-like deposit is then formed; digitaléin and other substances remaining in solution. The deposit dried on blotting paper is boiled with double its weight of alcohol, sp. gr. ·907; on cooling, crystals are slowly deposited during some days. They should be washed with a little diluted alcohol (·958) and dried: to purify them, they should be first recrystallized from chloroform, and subsequently from boiling alcohol sp. gr. ·828, some charcoal being used at the same time. Digitalin is thus obtained in colourless needle-shaped crystals. It assumes an intense emerald green colour when moistened with hydrochloric acid, and has an extremely bitter taste. On the animal economy, it displays all the peculiar effects of digitalis, the dose of a milligramme taken by an adult person once or twice a day occasioning somewhat alarming symptoms, but smaller doses exhibiting the sedative power of the herb.

Another body occurring in foxglove is the crystallizable sugar called Inosite, which was detected by Marmé in the leaves, as well as in those of dandelion (p. 394). Pectic matters are also present in foxglove leaves.

=Uses=—Foxglove is a very potent drug, having the effect of reducing the frequency and force of the heart’s action, and hence is given in special cases as a sedative; it is also employed as a diuretic.

=Adulteration=—The dried leaves of some other plants have occasionally been supplied for those of foxglove. Such are the leaves of Verbascum, which are easily recognized by their thick coat of branched stellate hairs; of Inula Conyza DC. and I. Helenium L., which have the margin almost entire, and in the latter plant the veins diverging nearly at a right angle from the midrib; in both plants the under side of the leaf is less strongly reticulated than in foxglove. But to avoid all chance of mistake, it is desirable that druggists should purchase the fresh flowering plant, which cannot be confounded with any other, and strip and dry the leaves for themselves.

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ACANTHACEÆ

HERBA ANDROGRAPHIDIS.

Kariyát or Creyat.

=Botanical Origin=—Andrographis[1727] paniculata Nees ab E. (Justicia Burm.), an annual herb, 1 to 2 feet high, common throughout India, growing under the shade of trees. It is found likewise in Ceylon and Java, and has been introduced into the West Indies. In some districts of India it is cultivated.

[1727] Andrographis from δνὴρ and γραϕὶς, in allusion to the brush-like anther and filament.—Fig. in Bentley and Trimen’s Med. Plants, part 23 (1877).

=History=—It is probable that in ancient Hindu medicine this plant was administered indiscriminately with chiretta, which, with several other species of Ophelia, is known in India by nearly the same vernacular names. Ainslie asserts that it was a component of a famous bitter tincture called by the Portuguese of India Droga amara; but on consulting the authority he quotes[1728] we find that the bitter employed in that medicine was Calumba. Andrographis is known in Bengal as Mahā-tīta, literally king of bitters, from the Sanskrit tikta, “bitter,” a title of which it has been thought so far deserving that it has been admitted to a place in the Pharmacopœia of India.

=Description=—The straight, knotty branch stems are obtusely quadrangular, about ¼ of an inch thick at the base, of a dark green colour and longitudinally furrowed. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, lanceolate, entire, the largest ½ an inch or more wide and 3 inches long. Their upper surface is dark green, the under somewhat lighter, and as seen under a lens finely granular. The leaves are very thin, brittle, and, like the stems, entirely glabrous.

In the well-dried specimen before us, for which we are indebted to Dr. G. Bidie of Madras, flowers are wanting and only a few roots are present. The latter are tapering and simple, emitting numerous thin rootlets, greyish externally, woody and whitish within. The plant is inodorous and has a persistent pure bitter taste.

=Chemical Composition=—The aqueous infusion of the herb exhibits a slight acid reaction, and has an intensely bitter taste, which appears due to an indifferent, non-basic principle, for the usual reagents do not indicate the presence of an alkaloid. Tannic acid on the other hand produces an abundant precipitate, a compound of itself with the bitter principle. The infusion is but little altered by the salts of iron; it contains a considerable quantity of chloride of sodium.

=Uses=—Employed as a pure bitter tonic like quassia, gentian, or chiretta, with the last of which it is sometimes confounded.

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SESAMEÆ

OLEUM SESAMI.

Sesamé Oil, Gingeli, Gingili or Jinjili Oil, Til or Teel Oil, Benné Oil; F. Huile de Sésame; G. Sesamöl.

=Botanical Origin=—Sesamum indicum DC., an erect, pubescent annual herb, 2 to 4 feet high,[1729] indigenous to India, but propagated by cultivation throughout the warmer regions of the globe, and not now found anywhere in the wild state. In Europe, Sesamum is only grown in some districts of Turkey and Greece, and on a small scale in Sicily and in the islands of Malta and Gozo. It does not succeed well even in the South of France.

[1728] Paolino da San Bartolomeo, Voyage to the East Indies (1776-1789), translated from the German, Lond. 1800; pp. 14. 409.

[1729] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen’s Med. Plants, part 23 (1877).

=History=—Sesamé is a plant which we find on the authority of the most ancient documents of Egyptian, Hebrew,[1730] Sanskrit, Greek, and Roman literature, has been used by mankind for the sake of its oily seeds from the earliest times. The Egyptian name Semsemt already occurring in the Papyrus Ebers, is still existing in the Coptic Semsem, the Arabic Simsim, and the modern Sesamum. The Indian languages have their own terms for it, the Hindustani Til, from the Sanskrit Tila, being one of the best known.[1731] Tila already occurs in the Vedic literature. In the days of Pliny the oil was an export from Sind to Europe by way of the Red Sea, precisely as the seeds are at the present day.

During the middle ages the plant, then known as Suseman or Sempsen, was cultivated in Cyprus, Egypt and Sicily; the oil was an article of import from Alexandria to Venice. Joachim Camerarius gave a good figure of the plant in his “Hortus medicus et philosophicus” 1588 (tab. 44). In modern times sesame oil gave way to that of olives, yet at present it is an article which, if not so renowned, is at least of far greater consumption.

=Production=—The plant comes to perfection within 3 or 4 months; its capsule contains numerous flat seeds, which are about ²/₁₀10 of an inch long by ¹/₂₀ thick, and weigh on an average ¹/₁₆ of a grain. To collect them, the plant when mature is cut down, and stacked in heaps for a few days, after which it is exposed to the sun during the day, but collected again into heaps at night. By this process the capsules gradually ripen and burst, and the seeds fall out.[1732]

The plant is found in several varieties affording respectively white, yellowish, reddish, brown or black seeds. The dark seeds may be deprived of a part of their colouring matter by washing, which is sometimes done with a view to obtain a paler oil.[1733]

We obtained from yellowish seeds 56 per cent. of oil; on a large scale, the yield varies with the variety of seed employed and the process of pressing, from 45 to 50 per cent.

=Description=—The best kinds of sesamé oil have a mild agreeable taste, a light yellowish colour, and scarcely any odour; but in these respects the oil is liable to vary with the circumstances already mentioned. The white seeds produced in Sind are reputed to yield the finest oil.

We prepared some oil by means of ether, and found it to have a sp. gr. of 0·919 at 23° C.; it solidified at 5° C., becoming rather turbid at some degrees above this temperature. Yet sesame oil is more fluid at ordinary temperatures than ground-nut oil, and is less prone to change by the influence of the air. It is in fact, when of fine quality, one of the less alterable oils.

[1730] Isaiah xxviii. 27.

[1731] The word Gingeli (or Gergelim), which Roxburgh remarks was (as it is now) in common use among Europeans, derives from the Arabic chulchulân, denoting sesame seed in its husks before being reaped (Dr. Rice). The word Benné is, we believe, of West African origin, and has no connection with Ben, the name of Moringa.

[1732] For further particulars see Buchanan, Journey from Madras through Mysore, etc. i. (1807) 95. and ii. 224.

[1733] This curious process is described in the Reports of Juries, Madras Exhibition, 1856, p. 31.—That the colouring matter of the seeds is actually soluble in water is confirmed by Lépine of Pondicherry as we have learnt from his manuscript notes presented to the Musée des Produits des Colonies de France at Paris. The seeds may even be used as a dye.

=Chemical Composition=—The oil is a mixture of olein, stearin and other compounds of glycerin with acids of the fatty series. We prepared with it in the usual way a lead plaster, and treated the latter with ether in order to remove the oleate of lead. The solution was then decomposed by sulphuretted hydrogen, evaporated and exposed to hyponitric vapours. By this process we obtained 72·6 per cent. of Elaïdic Acid. The specimen of sesamé oil prepared by ourselves consequently contained 76·0 per cent. of olein, inasmuch as it must be supposed to be present in the form of triolein. In commercial oils the amount of olein is certainly not constant.

As to the solid part of the oil, we succeeded in removing fatty acids, freely melting, after repeated crystallizations, at 67° C., which may consist of stearic acid mixed with one or more of the allied homologous acids, as palmitic and myristic. By precipitating with acetate of magnesium, as proposed by Heintz, we finally isolated acids melting at 52·5 to 53°, 62 to 63°, and 69·2° C., which correspond to myristic, palmitic and stearic acids.

The small proportion of solid matter which separates from the oil on congelation cannot be removed by pressure, for even at many degrees below the freezing point it remains as a soft magma. In this respect sesamé oil differs from that of olive.

Sesamé oil contains an extremely small quantity of a substance, perhaps resinoid, which has not yet been isolated. It may be obtained in solution by repeatedly shaking 5 volumes of the oil with one of glacial acetic acid. If a cold mixture of equal weights of sulphuric and nitric acids is added in like volume, the acetic solution acquires a greenish yellow hue. The same experiment being made with spirit of wine substituted for acetic acid, the mixture assumes a blue colour, quickly changing to greenish yellow. The oil itself being gently shaken with sulphuric and nitric acids, takes a fine green hue, as shown in 1852 by Behrens, who at the same time pointed out that no other oil exhibits this reaction. It takes place even with the bleached and perfectly colourless oil. Sesamé oil added to other oils, if to a larger extent than 10 per cent., may be recognised by this test. The reaction ought to be observed with small quantities, say 1 gramme of the oil and 1 gramme of the acid mixture, previously cooled.

=Commerce=—The commercial importance of Sesamé may be at once illustrated by the fact that France imported in 1870, 83 millions; in 1871, 57½ millions; and 1872, 50 millions of kilogrammes (984,693 cwt.) of the seed.[1734]

The quantity shipped from British India in the year 1871-72 was 565,854 cwt., of which France took no less than 495,414 cwt.[1735] The imports of the seed into the United Kingdom in 1870 were to the value of only about £13,000.

Sesamé is extensively produced in Corea and in the Chinese island of Formosa, which in 1869 exported the exceptionally large quantity of 46,000 peculs[1736] (1 pecul = 133 lb.). Zanzibar and Mozambique also furnish considerable quantities of sesamé, whilst on the West Coast of Africa the staple oil-seed is Ground-nut (Arachis hypogæa L. p. 186). The chief place for the manufacture of sesamé oil is Marseilles.

[1734] Documents Statistiques réunis par l’Administration des Douanes sur le commerce de la France, année 1872.

[1735] Statement of the Trade and Navigation of British India with Foreign Countries, Calcutta, 1872. 62.

[1736] Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1870, Shanghai, 1871. 81.

=Uses=—Good sesamé oil might be employed without disadvantage for all the purposes for which olive oil is used.[1737] As its congealing point is some degrees below that of olive oil, it is even more fitted for cool climates. Sesamé seeds are largely consumed as food both in India and Tropical Africa. The foliage of the plant abounds in mucilage, and in the United States is sometimes used in the form of poultice.

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LABIATÆ

FLORES LAVANDULÆ.

Lavender Flowers; F. Fleurs de Lavande; G. Lavendelblumen.

=Botanical Origin=—Lavandula vera DC., a shrubby plant growing in the wild state from 1 to 2 feet high, but attaining 3 feet or more under cultivation. It is indigenous to the mountainous regions of the countries bordering the western half of the Mediterranean basin. Thus it occurs in Eastern Spain, Southern France (extending northward to Lyons and Dauphiny), in Upper Italy, Corsica, Calabria and Northern Africa,—on the outside of the olive region.[1738] In cultivation it grows very well in the open air throughout the greater part of Germany and as far north as Norway and Livonia; the northern plant would even appear to be more fragrant, according to Schübeler.[1739]

=History=—There has been much learned investigation in order to identify lavender in the writings of the classical authors, but the result has not been satisfactory, and no allusion has been found which unquestionably refers either to L. vera or to L. Spica,[1740] whereas L. Stœchas was perfectly familiar to the ancients.

The earliest mention of lavender that we have observed, occurs in the writings of the abbess Hildegard,[1741] who lived near Bingen on the Rhine during the 12th century, and who in a chapter De Lavendula alludes to the strong odour and many virtues of the plant. In a poem of the school of Salerno entitled Flos Medicinæ[1742] occur the following lines:—

“Salvia, castoreum, lavendula, primula veris, Nasturtium, athanas hæc sanant paralytica membra.”

In 1387 cushions of satin were made for King Charles VI. of France, to be stuffed with “lavende.”[1743] Its use was also popular at an early period in the British isles, for we find “Llafant” or “Llafanllys” mentioned among the remedies of the “Physicians of Myddvai.”[1744] And in Walton’s “Description of an inn,” about the year 1680 to 1690, we find the walls stuck round with ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender....[1745]

[1737] For pharmaceutical uses, the larger proportion of olein and consequent lesser tendency to solidify, should be remembered.

[1738] On Mont Ventoux near Avignon, the region of Lavandula vera is comprised, according to Martins, between 1500 and 4500 feet above the sea-level.—Ann. des Sc. Nat., Bot. x. (1838) 145. 149.

[1739] Pflanzenwelt Norwegens, Christiania (1873-1875) 26O.

[1740] F. de Gingins-Lassaraz, Hist. des Lavandes, Genève et Paris, 1826.

[1741] Opera Omnia, accurante J. P. Migne, Paris, 1855. 1143.

[1742] S. de Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, Napoli, i. 417-516.

[1743] Douët d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Argenterie des rois de France, ii. (1874) 148.

[1744] Meddygon Myddfai (see Appendix) 287.

[1745] Macaulay, Hist. of England, i. ch. 3, Inns.

Lavender was well known to the botanist of the 16th century.

=Description=—The flowers of Common Lavender are produced in a lax terminal spike, supported on a long naked stalk. They are arranged in 6 to 10 whorls (verticillasters), the lowest being generally far remote from those above it. A whorl consists of two cymes, each having, when fully developed, about three flowers, below which is a rhomboidal acuminate bract, as well as several narrow smaller bracts belonging to the particular flowers. The calyx is tubular, contracted towards the mouth, marked with 13 nerves and 5-toothed, the posterior tooth much larger than the others. The corolla of a violet colour is tubular, two-lipped, the upper lip with two, the lower with three lobes. Both corolla and calyx, as well as the leaves and stalks, are clothed with a dense tomentum of stellate hairs, amongst which minute shining oil-glands can be seen by the aid of a lens.

The flowers emit when rubbed a delightful fragrance, and have a pleasant aromatic taste. The leaves of the plant are oblong linear, or lanceolate, revolute at the margin and very hoary when young.

For pharmaceutical use or as a perfume, lavender flowers are stripped from the stalks and dried by a gentle heat. They are but seldom kept in the shops, being grown almost entirely for the sake of their essential oil.

=Production of Essential Oil=—Lavender is cultivated in the parishes of Mitcham, Carshalton and Beddington and a few adjoining localities, all in Surrey, to the extent of about 300 acres. It is also grown at Market Deeping in Lincolnshire; also at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where lavender was apparently cultivated as early as the year 1568.[1746]

At the latter place there were in 1871 about 50 acres so cropped.

The plants which are of a small size, and grown in rows in dry open fields, flower in July and August. The flowers are usually cut with the stalks of full length, tied up in mats, and carried to the distillery there to await distillation. This is performed in the same large stills that are used for peppermint. The flowers are commonly distilled with the stalks as gathered, and either fresh, or in a more or less dry state. A few cultivators distill only the flowering heads, thereby obtaining a superior product. Still more rarely, the flowers are stripped from the stalks, and the latter rejected in toto.[1747] According to the careful experiments of Bell,[1748] the oil made in this last method is of exceedingly fine quality. The produce he obtained in 1846 was 26½ ounces per 100 lb. of flowers, entirely freed from stalks; in 1847, 25½ ounces; and in 1848, 20 ounces: the quantities of flowers used in the respective years were 417, 633, and 923 lb. Oil distilled from the stalks alone was found to have a peculiar rank odour. In the distillation of lavender, it is said that the oil which comes over in the earlier part of the operation is of superior flavour.

[1746] Perhs, Proc. American Pharm. Association, 1876. 819.

[1747] For more particulars see the interesting account of Holmes, Pharm. Journ. viii. (1877) 301. The author describes also the disease which is affecting the lavender since about the year 1860.

[1748] Pharm. Journ. viii. (1849) 276.

We have no accurate data as to the produce of oil obtained in the ordinary way, but it is universally stated to vary extremely with the season. Warren[1749] gives it as 10 to 12 lb., and in an exceptional case as much as 24 lb. from the acre of ground under cultivation. At Hitchin,[1750] the yield would appear to approximate to the last named quantity. The experiments performed in Bell’s laboratory as detailed above, show that the flowers deprived of stalks afforded on an average exactly 1½ per cent. of essential oil.

Oil of Lavandula vera is distilled in Piedmont, and in the mountainous parts of the South of France, as in the villages about Mont Ventoux near Avignon, and in those some leagues west of Montpellier (St. Guilhen-le-désert, Montarnaud and St. Jean de Fos)—in all cases from the wild plant. This foreign oil is offered in commerce of several qualities, the highest of which commands scarcely one-sixth the price of the oil produced at Mitcham.[1751] The cheaper sorts at least are obtained by distilling the entire plant.

=Chemical Composition=—The only constituent of lavender flowers that has attracted the attention of chemists is the essential oil (Oleum Lavandulæ). It is a pale yellow, mobile liquid, varying in sp. gr. from 0·87 to 0·94 (Zeller), having a very agreeable odour of the flowers and a strong aromatic taste. The oil distilled at Mitcham (1871) we find to rotate the plane of polarization 4·2° to the left, in a column of 50 mm.

Oil of lavender seems to be a mixture in variable proportions of oxygenated oils and stearoptene, the latter being identical, according to Dumas, with common camphor. In some samples it is said to exist to the extent of one-half, and to be sometimes deposited from the oil in cold weather; we have not however been able to ascertain this fact. The oil according to Lallemand (1859) appears also to contain compound ethers.

=Commerce=—Dried lavender flowers are the object of some trade in the south of Europe. According to the official Tableau général du Commerce de la France, Lavender and Orange Flowers (which are not separated) were exported in 1870 to the extent of 110,958 kilo. (244,741 lb.),—chiefly to the Barbary States, Turkey and America. There are no data to show the amount of oil of lavender imported into England.

=Uses=—Lavender flowers are not prescribed in modern English medicine. The volatile oil has the stimulant properties common to bodies of the same class and is much used as a perfume.

[1749] Pharm. Journ. vi. (1865) 257.

[1750] Ibid. i. (1860) 278. The statement is that an acre of land yields “about 6 Winchester quarts” of oil.—One Winchester quart = 282 litres.

[1751] The Mitcham oil fetches 30_s._ to 60_s._ per lb., according to the season.

Other Species of Lavender.

1. Lavandula Spica DC. is a plant having a very close resemblance to L. vera, of which Linnæus considered it a variety, though its distinctness is now admitted. It occurs over much of the area of L. vera, but does not extend so far north, nor is it found in such elevated situations, or beyond the limit of the olive. It is in fact a more southern plant and more susceptible to cold, so that it cannot be cultivated in the open soil in Britain except in sheltered positions. In Languedoc and Provence, it is the common species from the sea-level up to about 2000 feet, where it is met by the more hardy L. vera.[1752]

Lavandula Spica is distilled in the south of France, the flowering wild plant in its entire state being used. The essential oil, which is termed in French Essence d’Aspic, is known to English druggists as Oleum Lavandulæ spicæ, Oleum Spicæ, or Oil of Spike. It resembles true oil of lavender, but compared with that distilled in England it has a much less delicate fragrance. This however may depend upon the frequent adulteration, for we find that flowers of the two plants (L. vera and L. Spica) grown side by side in an English garden, are hardly distinguishable in fragrance. Porta already even, in speaking of the oil of lavender flowers, stated:[1753] “e spica fragrantior excipitur, ut illud quod ex Gallia provenit....”—Lallemand (1859) isolated from oil of spike a camphor which he believes to be identical with common camphor.

Oil of Spike is used in porcelain painting and in veterinary medicine.

2. Lavandula Stœchas L.—This plant was well known to the ancients; Dioscorides remarks that it gives a name to the Stœchades, the modern isles of Hières near Toulon, where the plant still abounds. It has a wider range than the two species of Lavandula already described, for it is found in the Canaries and in Portugal, and eastward throughout the Mediterranean region to Constantinople and Asia Minor. It may at once be known from the other lavenders by its flower-spike being on a short stalk, and terminating in 2 or 3 conspicuous purple bracts.

The flowers, called Flores Stœchados or Stœchas arabica,[1754] were formerly kept in the shops, and had a place in the London Pharmacopœia down to 1746. We are not aware that they are, or ever were distilled for essential oil, though they are stated to be the source of True Oil of Spike.[1755]

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HERBA MENTHÆ VIRIDIS

Spearmint.

=Botanical Origin=—Mentha viridis L. is a fragrant perennial plant, chiefly known in Europe, Asia and North America, as the Common Mint of gardens, and only found apparently wild in countries where it has long been cultivated. It occurs occasionally in Britain under such circumstances.[1756]

[1752] On the high land between Nice and Turbia, I have observed the two species growing together, and that L. vera is in flower two or three weeks earlier than L. Spica.—D. H.

[1753] De distillatione, Romæ, 1608. 87.

[1754] The incorrectness of the term Arabica is noticed by Pomet. How it came to be applied we know not.

[1755] Pereira, Elem. of Mat. Med. ii. (1850) 1368.—Nor do we know if L. lanata Boiss., a very fragrant species closely allied to L. Spica DC., and a native of Spain, is distilled in that country.

[1756] Bentham, Handbook of the British Flora, 1858. 413.—Parkinson (1640) remarks of Speare Mint that it is “onely found planted in gardens with us.”

Mentha viridis is regarded by Bentham as not improbably a variety of M. silvestris L., perpetuated through its ready propagation by suckers. J. G. Baker remarks, that while these two plants are sufficiently distinct as found in England, yet continental forms occur which bridge over their differences.[1757]

=History=—Mint is mentioned in all early mediæval lists of plants, and was certainly cultivated in the convent gardens of the 9th century. Turner, who has been called “the father of English botany,” states in his Herball[1758] that the garden mint of his time was also called “Spere Mynte.” We find spearmint also described by Gerarde who terms it Mentha Romana vel Sarracenica, or Common Garden Mint, but his statement that the leaves are white, soft, and hairy does not well apply to the plant as now found in cultivation.

=Description=—Spearmint has a perennial rootstock which throws out long runners. Its stem 2 to 3 feet high is erect, when luxuriant branched below with short erecto-patent branches, firm, quadrangular, naked or slightly hairy beneath the nodes, often brightly tinged with purple. Leaves sessile or the lower slightly stalked, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, rounded or even cordate at the base, dark green and glabrous above, paler and prominently veined with green or purple beneath, rather thickly glandular, but either quite naked or hairy only on the midrib and principal veins, the point narrowed out and acute, the teeth sharp but neither very close nor deep, the lowest leaves measuring about 1 inch across by 3 or 4 inches long. Inflorescence a panicled arrangement of spikes, of which the main one is 3 or 4 inches long by ⅜ inch wide, the lowest whorls sometimes ½ an inch from each other and the lowest bracts leafy. Bracteoles linear-subulate, equalling or exceeding the expanded flowers, smooth or slightly ciliated. Pedicels about ¾ line long, purplish glandular, but never hairy. Calyx also often purplish, the tube campanulato-cylindrical, ⅜ line long, the teeth lanceolate-subulate, equalling the tube, the flower part of which is naked, but the teeth and often the upper part clothed more or less densely with erecto-patent hairs. Corolla reddish-purple, about twice as long as the calyx, naked both within and without. Not smooth.

The plant varies slightly in the shape of its leaves, elongation of spike and hairiness of calyx. The entire plant emits a most fragrant odour when rubbed, and has a pungent aromatic taste.

=Production=—Spearmint is grown in kitchen gardens, and more largely in market gardens. A few acres are under cultivation with it at Mitcham, chiefly for the sake of the herb, which is sold mostly in a dried state.

The cultivation of spearmint is carried on in the United States in precisely the same manner as that of peppermint, but on a much smaller scale. Mr. H. G. Hotchkiss of Lyons, Wayne County, State of New York, has informed us that his manufacture of the essential oil amounted in 1870 to 1162 lb. The plant he employs appears from the specimen with which he has favoured us, to be identical with the spearmint of English gardens, and is not the Curled Mint (Mentha crispa) of Germany.

[1757] Seemann’s Journal of Botany, Aug. 1865. p. 239. We borrow Mr. Baker’s careful description of Mentha viridis.

[1758] Part 2. (1568) 54.

=Chemical Composition=—Spearmint yields an essential oil (Oleum Menthæ viridis) in which reside the medicinal virtues of the plant. Kane,[1759] who examined it, gives its sp. gr. as 0·914, and its boiling point as 160° C. The oil yielded him a considerable amount of stearoptene. Gladstone[1760] found spearmint oil to contain a hydrocarbon almost identical with oil of turpentine in odour and other physical properties, mixed with an oxidized oil to which is due the peculiar smell of the plant. The latter oil boils at 225° C.; its sp. gr. is 0·951, and it was found to be isomeric with carvol, C₁₀H₁₄O. According to our experiments the oil, distilled from Curled Mint grown in Germany, deviates the plane of polarization 37°·4 to the left when examined in a column of 100 millimetres. We prepared from it the crystallized compound (C₁₀H₁₄0)₂SH₂, and isolated from it the liquid C₁₀H₁₄O, which differs from carvol (see Fructus Carui, page 306) by its levogyrate power.[1761]

=Uses=—Spearmint is used in the form of essential oil and distilled water, precisely in the same manner as peppermint In the United States the oil is also employed by confectioners and the manufacturers of perfumed soap.

=Substitutes=—Oil of spearmint is now rarely distilled in England, its high cost[1762] causing it to be nearly unsaleable. The cheaper foreign oil is offered in price-currents as of two kinds, namely American and German. Of the first we have already spoken: the second, termed in German Krauseminzöl, is the produce of Mentha aquatica L. var. γ crispa Bentham, a plant cultivated in Northern Germany. Its oil seems to agree with the oil of spearmint.

HERBA MENTHÆ PIPERITÆ.

Peppermint; F. Menthe poivrée; G. Pfefferminze.

=Botanical Origin=—Mentha piperita Hudson (non Linn.), an erect usually glabrous perennial, much resembling the Common Spearmint of the gardens, but differing from it in having the leaves all stalked, the flowers larger, the upper whorls of flowers somewhat crowded together, and the lower separate. In the opinion of Bentham it is possibly a mere variety of M. hirsuta L., with which it can be connected by numerous intermediate forms.

Peppermint rapidly propagates itself by runners, and is now found in wet places in several parts of England, as well as on the Continent. It is cultivated on the large scale in England, France, Germany, and North America.

=History=—Mentha piperita was first observed in Hertfordshire by Dr. Eales, and communicated to Ray, who in the second edition of his Synopsis Stirpium Britannicarum, 1696, noticed it under the name of Mentha spicis brevioribus et habitioribus, foliis Menthæ fuscæ, sapore fervido piperis; and in his Historia Plantarum[1763] as “Mentha palustris ... Peper-Mint.”[1764] Dale, who found the plant in the adjoining county of Essex, states[1765] that it is esteemed a specific in renal and vesical calculus; and Ray, in the third edition of his Synopsis, declares it superior to all other mints as a remedy for weakness of the stomach and for diarrhœa. Peppermint was admitted to the London Pharmacopœia in 1721, under the designation of Mentha piperitis sapore.

[1759] Philosophical Magazine, xiii. (1838) 444.

[1760] Journ. of Chemical Society, ii. (1854) 11.

[1761] Flückiger, Pharm. Journ. vii. (1876) 75.

[1762] Price from 1824 to 1839, 40_s._ to 48_s._ per lb.

[1763] Tomus iii. (1704) 284.

[1764] I have examined the original specimen still preserved among Ray’s plants in the British Museum and find it to agree perfectly with the plant now in cultivation.—D. H.

[1765] Pharmacologiæ Supplementum, Lond. 1705. 117.

The cultivation of peppermint at Mitcham in Surrey dates from about 1750,[1766] at which period only a few acres of ground were there devoted to medicinal plants. At the end of the last century, above 100 acres were cropped with peppermint. But so late as 1805 there were no stills at Mitcham, and the herb had to be carried to London for the extraction of the oil. Of late years the cultivation has diminished in extent, by reason of the increased value of land and the competition of foreign oil of peppermint.

On the Continent Mentha Piperitis was grown as early as 1771 at Utrecht; Gaubius[1767] appears to have been the first to notice “Camphora Europæa Menthæ Piperitidis,” i.e. Menthol (see page 483).

In Germany peppermint became practically known in the latter half of the last century, especially through the recommendation of Knigge.[1768]

=Description=—The rootstock of peppermint is perennial, throwing out runners. The stem is erect, 3 to 4 feet high, when luxuriant somewhat branched below with erecto-patent branches, firm, quadrangular, slightly hairy, often tinged with purple. Leaves all stalked, the stalks of the lower ½ to ¾ of an inch long, naked or nearly so, the leaf lanceolate, narrowed or rather rounded towards the base, the point narrowed out and acute, the lowest 2 to 3 inches long by about ¾ of an inch broad, naked and dull green above, paler and glandular all over, but only slightly hairy upon the veins beneath; the teeth sharp, fine, and erecto-patent. Inflorescence in a loose lanceolate or acutely conical spike, 2 to 3 inches long by about ¾ of an inch broad at the base, the lowest whorls separate, and usually the lowest bracts leaf-like. Bracteoles lanceolate-acuminate, about equalling the expanded flowers, slightly ciliated. Pedicels 1 to 1½ lines long, purplish, glandular but not hairy. Calyx often purplish, the tube about 1 line long and the teeth ½ a line, the tube campanulate-cylindrical, purplish, not hairy, but dotted over with prominent glands; the teeth lanceolate subulate, furnished with short erecto-patent hairs. Corolla reddish-purple about twice as long as the calyx, naked both within and without. Nut smooth[1769] (rugose, according to our observation). The odour and taste are strongly aromatic.

In var. 2. vulgaris of Sole, M. piperita β. Smith, the plant is more hairy, with the spikes broader and shorter, or even bluntly capitate. colourless, pale yellow, or greenish liquid, of sp. gr. varying from 0·84 to 0·92. We learn from information kindly supplied by Messrs. Schimmel and Co., Leipzig, that the best peppermint grown in Germany, carefully dried, affords from 1 to 1·25 per cent. of oil. It has a strong and agreeable odour, with a powerful aromatic taste, followed by a sensation of cold when air is drawn into the mouth. We find that the Mitcham oil examined by polarized light in a column 50 mm. long, deviates from 14°·2 to 10°·7 to the left, American oil 4°·3.

=Chemical Composition=—The constituent for the sake of which peppermint is cultivated is the essential oil, Oleum Menthæ piperitæ, a coloureless, pale yellow or greenish liquid, of sp. gr. varying from 0·84 to 0·92. We learn from information kindly supplied by Messrs. Schimmel and Co., Leipzig, that the best peppermint grown in Germany, carefully dried from 1 to 1·25 per cent of oil. It has a strong and agreeable odour, with a powerful aromatic taste, followed by a sensation of cold when air is drawn into the mouth. We find that the Mitcham oil examined by polarized light in a column 50 mm. long, deviates from 14·2° to 10·7° to the left, American oil 4·2°.

[1766] Lysons, Environs of London, i. (1800) 254.

[1767] Adversariorum varii argumenti liber unus, Leidae, 1771. 99.

[1768] De Menthâ Piperitide Commentatio, Erlangæ, 1780.

[1769] This description is borrowed from Mr. Baker’s paper on the English Mints, referred to at page 480, note 1.

When oil of peppermint is cooled to -4° C., it sometimes deposits colourless hexagonal crystals of Peppermint Camphor, C₁₀H₁₉OH, called also Menthol. We have never observed it, nor are we aware that menthol has been noticed in America, but it is largely afforded by eastern mints, and found in commerce under the name of Chinese or Japanese Oil of Peppermint,[1770] either liquid, and easily depositing the camphor, or also forming a crystalline mass impregnated with the liquid oil.

Pure menthol has the exquisite odour and taste of peppermint; it forms hexagonal crystals, melting at 42° C., and boiling at 212° C. By distilling menthol with P₂O₅ it yields menthene, C₁₀H₁₈, a levogyrate liquid, boiling at 163°, the peculiar odour of which reminds of peppermint.[1771] The Chinese crystallized oil of peppermint has sometimes a bitterish after-taste and an odour similar to that of spearmint, but by recrystallization it assumes the pure flavour.

The liquid part of the oil of peppermint has not yet been thoroughly investigated; it appears to consist chiefly of the compound C₁₀H₁₈O. Upon the liquid portions depend the remarkable colorations which the oil of peppermint is capable of assuming. If 50 to 70 drops of the crude oil are shaken with one drop of nitric acid, sp. gr. about 1·2, the mixture changes from faintly yellowish to brownish, and, after an hour or two, exhibits a bluish, violet or greenish colour; in reflected light, it appears reddish and not transparent. The colour thus produced lasts a fortnight. We have thus examined the various samples of peppermint oil at our command, and may state that the finest among them assume the most beautiful coloration and fluorescence, which, however, shows very appreciable differences. An inferior oil of American origin was not coloured; and a very old sample of an originally excellent English oil was likewise not coloured by the test. Menthol is not altered when similarly treated.[1772] The nitric acid test is not capable of revealing adulterations of peppermint oil, for the coloration takes place with an oil to which a considerable quantity of oil of turpentine has been added.

[1770] The Chinese oil is distilled at Canton, and was exported from Canton in 1872 to the extent of 800 lbs.; it was valued at about 30s. per lb.—See also Flückiger in Pharm. Journ. Oct. 14, 1871. 321. As to Japan we are informed that there are large plantations of peppermint; the oil “Hakano Abura” is exported from Hiogo and Osaka, but frequently adulterated. Mr. Holmes informed me (1879) that he found the mother plant coming nearest to Mentha canadensis.—F. A. F..

[1771] On Japanese Peppermint Camphor see Beckett and Alder Wright, Yearbook of Pharm. 1875. 605.

[1772] Pharm. Journ. Feb. 25, 1871. 682.

Remarkable colorations of a different hue are also displayed by the various kinds of oil of peppermint if other chemical agents are mixed with it. Thus green or brownish tints are produced by means of anhydrous chloral; the oil becomes bluish or greenish or rose-coloured if shaken with a concentrated solution of bisulphite of sodium. It is worthy of note that oils of different origin, which cannot be distinguished by means of nitric acid, exhibit totally different colorations if mixed with either of the liquids just named, or with vapour of bromine. This behaviour may be of some use in the examination of commercial sorts of peppermint oil.

As to bisulphite of sodium, it yields a solid compound with certain kinds of peppermint oil, which we have not yet examined.

=Production and Commerce=—In several parts of Europe, as well as in the United States, peppermint is cultivated on the large scale as a medicinal plant.

In England the culture is carried on in the neighbourhood of Mitcham in Surrey, near Wisebeach in Cambridgeshire, Market Deeping in Lincolnshire, and Hitchin in Hertfordshire.

At Mitcham in 1850 there were about 500 acres under cultivation; in 1864 only about 219 acres.[1773] At Market Deeping there were in 1871 about 150 acres cropped with peppermint. The usual produce in oil may be reckoned at 8 to 12 lb. per acre. The fields of peppermint at Mitcham are level, with a rich, friable soil, well manured and naturally retentive of moisture. The ground is kept free from weeds, and in other respects is carefully tilled. The crop is cut in August, and the herb is usually allowed to dry on the ground before it is consigned to the stills. These are of large size, holding 1000 to 2000 gallons, and heated by coal; each still is furnished with a condensing worm of the usual character, which passes out into a small iron cage secured by a padlock, in which stands the oil separator. The distillation is conducted at the lowest possible temperature. The water that comes over with the oil is not distilled with another lot of herb, but is for the most part allowed to run away, a very little only being reserved as a perquisite of the workmen. The produce is very variable, and no facilities exist for estimating it with accuracy.[1774] It is however stated that a ton of dried peppermint yields from 2½ to 3½ pounds of oil, which equals 0·11 to 0·15 per cent. But we have been assured by a grower at Mitcham that the yield is as much as 6 pounds from a ton, or 0·26 per cent.

At Mitcham and its neighbourhood two varieties of peppermint are at present recognized, the one being known as White Mint, the other as Black Mint, but the differences between the two are very slight. The Black Mint has purple stems; the White Mint, green stems, and as we have observed, leaves rather more coarsely serrated than those of the Black. The Black Mint is more prolific in essential oil than the White, and hence more generally cultivated; but the oil of the latter is superior in delicacy of odour and commands a higher price. White Mint is said to be principally grown for drying in bundles, or as it is termed “bunching.”

[1773] Pharm. Journ. x. (1851) 297. 340; also Warren in Pharm. Journ. vi. (1865) 257. To these papers and to personal inquiries we are indebted for most of the particulars relating to peppermint culture at Mitcham.

[1774] Only the larger growers have stills. These they let to smaller cultivators who pay so much for distilling a charge, i.e. whatever the still can be made to contain, without reference to weight. Hence the dried herb is preferred to the fresh, as a larger quantity can be distilled at one time.

Peppermint is grown on a vastly larger scale in America, the localities where the cultivation is carried on being Southern Michigan, Western New York, and Ohio. In Michigan where the plant was introduced in 1855, there were in 1858 about 2100 acres devoted to its growth, all with the exception of about 100 acres being in the county of St. Joseph, where there are about 100 distilleries. The average produce of this district was estimated in 1858 at 15,000 lb.; but the yield fluctuates enormously, and in the exceptionally fine season of 1855 it was reckoned at 30,000 lb. We must suppose that it is sometimes much larger, for we have been informed by Mr. H. G. Hotchkiss, of Lyons, Wayne County, State of New York, one of the most well-known dealers, in a letter under date Oct. 10, 1871, that the quantity sent out by him in the previous year reached the enormous amount of 57,365 lb. It is further stated by the official statistics of Hamburg for the year 1876 that this port received 25,840 lb. of peppermint oil from the United States and 14,890 lb. from Great Britain.

From the statistics quoted by Stearns[1775] it would appear that the produce of oil per acre is somewhat higher in America than in England, but from various causes information on this head cannot be very reliable.

Peppermint is cultivated at Sens in the department of the Yonne in France[1776] and in Germany in the environs of Leipzig, where the little town of Cölleda produces annually as much as 40,000 cwts. of the herb.

The annual crop of the world is supposed to yield 90,000 lb. of peppermint oil.[1777]

Peppermint oil varies greatly in commercial value, that of Mitcham commanding twice or three times as high a price as the finest American. Even the oil of Mitcham is by no means uniform in quality, certain plots of ground affording a product of superior fragrance. A damp situation or badly drained ground is well known to be unfavourable to the quantity and quality of oil.

The presence of weeds among the peppermint is an important cause of deterioration to the oil, and at Mitcham some growers give a gratuity to their labourers to induce them to be careful in throwing out other plants when cutting the herb for distillation. One grower of peppermint known to us was compelled to abandon the cultivation, owing to the enormous increase of Mentha arvensis L. which could not be separated, and which when distilled with the peppermint ruined the flavour of the latter. In America great detriment is occasioned by the growth of Erigeron canadensis L. Newly cleared ground planted with peppermint is liable to the intrusion of another plant of the order Compositæ, Erechtites hieracifolia Raf., which is also highly injurious to the quality of the oil.[1778]

=Uses=—A watery or spirituous solution of oil of peppermint is a grateful stimulant, and is a frequent adjunct to other medicines. Oil of peppermint is extensively consumed for flavouring and cordials.

[1775] To whose paper On the Peppermint Plantations of Michigan in the Proceedings of the Americ. Pharm. Assoc. for 1858, we owe the few particulars for which we can here afford space.—To be farther consulted, same Proceedings, 1876. 828.

[1776] Journ. de Pharm. viii. (1868) 130.—Abstract from Roze, La Menthe poivrée, sa culture en France, ses produits, falsifications de l’essence et moyens de les reconnaître, Paris, 1868. 43 pages.

[1777] Todd, Proceedings Am. Ph. Ass. 1876, 828.

[1778] Maisch, American Journ. of Pharm. March 1870. 120.

HERBA PULEGII.

Pennyroyal[1779]; F. Menthe pouliot, Pouliot vulgaire; G. Polei.

=Botanical Origin=—Mentha Pulegium L., a small perennial aromatic plant, common throughout the south of Europe and extending northward to Sweden, Denmark, England and Ireland, eastward to Asia Minor and Persia, and southward to Abyssinia, Algeria, Madeira and Teneriffe. It has been introduced into North[1780] and South America. For medicinal use it is cultivated on a small scale.

=History=—Pennyroyal was in high repute among the ancients. Both Dioscorides and Pliny describe its numerous virtues. In Northern Europe it was also much esteemed, as may be inferred from the frequent reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh works on medicine.

Gerarde considered the plant to be “so exceedingly well known to all our English nation” that it needed no description. In his time (circa 1590), it used to be collected on the commons round London, whence it was brought in plenty to the London markets. At the present day pennyroyal has fallen into neglect, and is not named in the British Pharmacopœia of 1867.

=Description=—The plant has a low, decumbent, branching stem, which in flowering rises to a height of about 6 inches. Its leaves, scarcely an inch in length and often much less, are petiolate, ovate, blunt, crenate at the margin, dotted with oil-glands above and below. The flowers are arranged in a series of dense, globose whorls, extending for a considerable distance up the stem. The whole plant is more or less hairy. It has a strong fragrant odour, less agreeable to most persons than that of peppermint or spearmint. Its taste, well perceived in the distilled water, is highly aromatic.

=Chemical Composition=—The most important constituent of pennyroyal is the essential oil, known in pharmacy as Oleum Pulegii, to which is due the odour of the plant. It has been examined by Kane,[1781] according to whom it has a sp. gr. of 0·927. Its boiling was found to fluctuate between 183° and 188° C. The formula assigned to it by this chemist is C₁₀H₁₆O. We ascertained that it contains no carvol (see page 481.)

=Production=—Pennyroyal is cultivated at Mitcham and is mostly sold dried; occasionally the herb is distilled for essential oil. The oil found in commerce is however chiefly French or German, and far less costly than that produced in England.

=Uses=—The distilled water of pennyroyal is carminative and antispasmodic, and is used in the same manner as peppermint water.

[1779] Pennyroyal, in old herbals Puloil royal is derived from Puleium regium, an old Latin name given from the supposed efficacy of the plant in destroying fleas (Prior).

[1780] The native Pennyroyal is however a different plant, namely Hedeoma pulegioides Pers., figured in part 21 (1877) of Bentley and Trimen’s Med. Plants.

[1781] Phil. Mag. xiii. (1838) 442.

HERBA THYMI VULGARIS.

Garden Thyme; F. Thym vulgaire; G. Thymiankraut.

=Botanical Origin=—Thymus vulgaris L., a small, erect, woody shrub reaching 8 to 10 inches in height, gregarious on sterile uncultivated ground in Portugal, Spain, Southern France and Italy, and in the mountainous parts of Greece. On Mont Ventoux near Avignon, it reaches an elevation above the sea of 3700 ft. (Martins). It is commonly cultivated in English kitchens as a sweet herb,[1782] and succeeds as an annual even in Iceland.

=History=—We are not aware that thyme had any reputation in the antiquity, nor do we know at what period it was first introduced in northern countries. Garden thyme was commonly cultivated in England in the 16th century, and was well figured and described by Gerarde. It is even said to have been formerly grown on a large scale for medicinal use in the neighbourhood of Deal and Sandwich in Kent.[1783] Camphor of Thyme was noticed by Neumann, apothecary to the Court at Berlin in 1725;[1784] it was called Thymol, and carefully examined in 1853 by Lallemand, and recommended instead of phenol (carbolic acid) in 1868 by Bouilhon, apothecary, and Paquet, M. D. of Lille.

=Description=—The plant produces thin, woody, branching stems, bearing sessile, linear-lanceolate, or ovate-lanceolate leaves. These are about ¼ of an inch long, revolute at the margin, more or less hoary, especially on the under side, and dotted with shining oil-glands. The small purple flowers are borne on round terminal heads, with sometimes a few lower whorls. The entire wild plant has a greyish tint by reason of a short white pubescence, yet as seen in gardens the plant is more luxuriant, greener and far less tomentose. It is extremely fragrant when rubbed, and has a pungent aromatic taste.

=Production of Essential Oil=—Though cultivated in gardens for culinary use, common thyme is not grown in England on a large scale. Its essential oil (Oleum Thymi), for which alone it is of interest to the druggist, is distilled in the south of France. In the neighbourhood of Nîmes, where we have observed the process, the entire plant is used, and the distillation is carried on at two periods of the year, namely in May and June when the plant is in flower, and again late in the autumn. The oil has a deep, reddish-brown colour, but becomes colourless though rather less fragrant by re-distillation. The two sorts of oil, termed respectively Huile rouge de Thym and Huile blanche de Thym, are found in commerce. The yield is about 1 per cent.

Oil of thyme is frequently termed in English shops Oil of Origanum, which it in no respect resembles, and which was never, so far as we know, found in commerce.[1785]

[1782] In many of the references to thyme, Wild Thyme (Thymus Serpyllum L.) is to be understood, and not the present species.

[1783] Booth in Treasury of Botany, ii. (1866) 1149.

[1784] Phil. Trans. No. 389.

[1785] For a note on True Oil of Origanum, see Hanbury, Pharm. Journ. x. (1851) 324, also Science Papers, 1876, p. 46.

=Chemical Composition=—The only constituent of the herb that has attracted any attention is the above-named essential oil. This liquid by fractional distillation is resolved into two portions: the first, more volatile and boiling below 180° C., is a mixture of two hydrocarbons, Cymene, C₁₀H₁₄ (see page 333), and Thymene, C₁₀H₁₆, the latter boiling at 165° C.

The second, named Thymol, C₁₀H₁₄O, which may also be extracted from the crude oil by means of caustic lye, has been described in our article Fructus Ajowan, at page 303. Commercial oil of thyme is said to be sometimes fraudulently deprived of thymol by that treatment.

=Uses=—Oil of thyme is an efficient external stimulant, and is sometimes employed as a liniment. Its chief consumption is in veterinary medicine. Thymol has been proposed as a disinfectant in the place of carbolic acid, in cases in which the odour of the latter is objectionable. The herb is not used in modern English medicine, but is often employed on the Continent.

HERBA ROSMARINI.

Herba Anthos; Rosemary; F. Romarin; G. Rosmarin.

=Botanical Origin=—Rosmarinus officinalis L., an evergreen shrub, attaining a height of 4 feet or more, abundant on dry rocky hills of the Mediterranean region, from the Spanish peninsula[1786] to Greece and Asia Minor. It generally prefers the neighbourhood of the sea, but occurs even in the Sahara, where it is collected and conveyed by caravans to Central Africa.[1787] It does not succeed well in Germany.

=History=—Rosemary[1788] is mentioned by Pliny, who ascribes to it numerous virtues. It was also familiar to the Arab physicians of Spain, one of whom, Ibn Baytar (13th cent.), states it to be an object of trade among the vendors of aromatics.[1789] In the middle ages rosemary was doubtless much esteemed, as may be inferred from the fact that it was one of the plants which Charlemagne ordered to be grown on the imperial farms.

It was probably in cultivation in Britain prior to the Norman Conquest, as it is recommended for use in an Anglo-Saxon herbal of the 11th century.[1790] In the “Physicians of Myddvai” a curious chapter[1791] is devoted to the virtues of Rosemary, called “Ysbwynwydd, and Rosa Marina in Latin.” The essential oil was distilled by Raymundus Lullus[1792] about A.D. 1330. John Philip de Lignamine,[1793] a writer of the 15th century, describes Rosemary as the usual condiment of salted meats.

[1786] From Galicia in Spain, stems of Rosmarinus having 2½ inches in diameter were to be seen at the Paris Exhibition, 1878.

[1787] Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord, 1864. 187.

[1788] From ros and marinus,—literally marine dew. Various opinions have been held as to the allusion conveyed by the name.

[1789] Sontheimer’s translation, i. 73.

[1790] Herbarium Apuleii—Leechdoms etc. of Early England, i. (1864) 185.

[1791] Meddygon Myddfai (see Appendix) p. 261. 292. 440.

[1792] Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, Genevæ, i. (1702) 829.

[1793] Conservatorium Sanitatis (or also, according to Haller, Biblioth. botanica, i. 237, De conservatione sanitatis, Bononiæ, 1475) cap. 81.

=Description=—Rosemary has sessile, linear, entire, opposite leaves about an inch in length, revolute at the margin; they are of coriaceous texture, green and glabrous above, densely tomentose and white beneath. Examined under a lens, the tomentum both of the leaves and young shoots is seen to consist of white stellate hairs; in that of the shoots which is less dense, minute oil-glands are discernible. These glands are of two kinds, large and small, and probably do not yield one and the same oil. The flowers have a campanulate 2-lipped calyx, and a pale blue and white corolla, the upper lip of which is emarginate and erect, the lower 3-lobed with the central lobe concave and pendulous. The whole plant has a very agreeable smell and a strong aromatic taste. It flowers in the early spring.

=Production of Essential Oil=—Rosemary is cultivated on a very small scale in English herb-gardens, and though a little oil has been occasionally distilled from it, English oil of rosemary is an article practically unknown in commerce. That with which the market is supplied is produced in the south of France and on the contiguous coasts of Italy. The plant, which is plentifully found wild, is gathered in summer (not while in flower) and distilled, the operator being sometimes an itinerant herbalist who carries his copper alembic from place to place, erecting it where herbs are plentiful, and where a stream of water enables him to cool a condenser of primitive construction.

Oil of rosemary is also produced on a somewhat large scale in the island of Lesina, south of Spalato in Dalmatia, whence it is exported by way of Trieste, even to France and Italy, to the extent of 300 to 350 quintals annually.[1794]

Some of the French manufacturers of essences offer oil of rosemary at a superior price as drawn from the flowers, by which we presume is meant the flowering tops, for the separation of the actual flowers would be impracticable on a large scale. The great bulk of the oil found in commerce is however that distilled from the entire plant.

=Chemical Composition=—The peculiar odour of rosemary depends on the essential oil, which is the only constituent of the plant that has afforded matter for chemical research.

Lallemand (1859) by fractional distillation, resolved oil of rosemary into two liquids,—the one a mobile hydrocarbon boiling at 165° C. and turning the plane of polarization to the left; the other, boiling between 200° and 210° C., deposits when exposed to a low temperature a large quantity of camphor. Gladstone (1864) found the oil to consist almost wholly of a hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆. This, according to our experiments, constitutes about ⁴/₅ of the oil; it deviates the plane of polarization to the left, whereas a fraction boiling at 200° to 210° C. deviates to the right. By warming the latter with nitric acid, we observed the odour of common camphor, and may therefore infer that a compound, C₁₀H₁₈O, is present in the oil under examination.

From Montgolfier’s investigations (1876) it would appear that the stearoptene or camphor above alluded to is a mixture of a dextrogyrate and a lævogyrate substance.

[1794] Unger, Der Rosmarin und seine Verwendung in Dalmatien—Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie, lvi. (1867) 587; abstracted, with a few additions, in Pharm. Journ. ix. (1879) 618.

=Uses=—The flowering tops and dried leaves are kept by the herbalists, but are not used in regular medicine. The volatile oil is employed as an external stimulant in liniments, and also as a perfume. Rosemary is popularly supposed to promote the growth of the hair.

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PLANTAGINEÆ

SEMEN ISPAGHULÆ.

Ispaghúl Seeds, Spogel Seeds.

=Botanical Origin=—Plantago decumbens Forsk. (P. Ispaghula Roxb.),[1795] a plant of variable aspect, from an inch to a foot in height, erect or decumbent, with linear lanceolate leaves which may be nearly glabrous, or covered with shaggy hairs. The flower-spikes differ according to the luxuriance of the plant, being in some specimens cylindrical and 1½ inches long, in others reduced to a globular head. The plant has a wide range, occurring in the Canary Islands, Egypt, Arabia, Beluchistan, Afghanistan, and North-western India. Stewart[1796] says it is common in the Peshawar valley and Trans-Indus generally up to 2000 feet; also on the plains and lower hills of the Punjab, but that he has never seen it cultivated in the latter region. It is said to be cultivated at Multan and Lahore, also in Bengal and Mysore.

=History=—The seeds which are found in all the bazaars of India and are held in great esteem, are generally designated by the Persian word Ispaghúl; but they also bear the Arabic name Bazre-qatúná, under which we find them mentioned by the Persian physician Alhervi[1797] in the 10th century, and about the same period or a little later by Avicenna.[1798] Several other Oriental writers are quoted by Ibn Baytar[1799] as referring to a drug of the same name, which may possibly have included the seeds of other species, as Plantago Psyllium L. and P. Cynops, having similar properties, and known to have been used from an early period.

J. H. Linck, whom we mentioned in our article on Oleum Cajuputi (p. 278), described in 1719 the seed under notice, yet without knowing its name; it further attracted the notice of Europeans towards the close of the last century,[1800] and has been often prescribed as a demulcent in dysentery and diarrhœa. It was admitted to the Pharmacopœia of India of 1868.

[1795] After the examination of numerous specimens, we adopt the course taken by Dr. Aitchison (Catalogue of the Plants of the Punjab and Sindh, Lond. 1869) of uniting P. Ispaghula to P. decumbens. The union of species in this group may probably be carried still further.—For a fig. see Bentley and Trimen, Med. Plants, part 21 (1877).

[1796] Punjab Plants, Lahore 1869. 174—also MS. note attached to specimens in Herb. Kew.

[1797] Liber Fundamentorum Pharmacologiæ, ed. Seligmann, Vindobonæ, 1830. 40.

[1798] Lib. ii. tract. 2. c. 541. (Valgrisi edition, 1564. i. 357.)

[1799] Sontheimer’s transl. i. (1840) 132.

[1800] Fleming, Catal. of Indian Med. Plants and Drugs, Calcutta, 1810. 31.

=Description=—The seeds, like those of other species of Plantago, are of boat-shaped form, the albumen being deeply furrowed on one side and vaulted on the other. They are a little over ⅒ of an inch in length and nearly half as broad, and so light that 100 weigh scarcely three grains. Their colour is a light pinkish grey with an elongated brown spot on the vaulted back, due to the embryo, which at this point is in close contact with the translucent testa. From this brown spot the thick radicle runs to the top of the seed. The hollow side of the seed is also brown and partially covered with a thin white membrane.

The seeds are highly mucilaginous in the mouth, but have neither taste nor odour. Those of the allied P. Psyllium have nearly the same form, but are shining and of a dark brown hue.

=Microscopic Structure=—This can be best investigated by immersing the seed in benzol, as in this medium the mucilage is insoluble. When thus examined, the whole surface is seen to consist of polyhedral cells, separated by a very thin brown layer from the albumen, which on the back of the seed is only 70 mkm. thick. The albumen is made up of thick-walled cells, loaded with granules of matter which acquire an orange hue on addition of iodine. The two cotyledons adhere in a direction perpendicular to the bottom of the furrow; their tissue is composed of thin-walled smaller cells, containing also albuminous granules and drops of fatty oil.

If the seed is immersed in water, the cells composing the epidermis instantly swell and elongate, and soon burst, leaving only fragments of their walls. When examined under glycerin, the change is more gradual, and the outer walls of the cells yielding the mucilage display a series of thin layers, which slowly swell and disappear by the action of water. The mucilage is consequently not contained within the cells, but is formed of the secondary deposits on their walls, as in linseed and quince pips.

=Chemical Composition=—Mucilage is so abundantly yielded by these seeds, that one part of them with 20 parts of water forms a thick tasteless jelly. On addition of a larger quantity of water and filtering, but little mucilage passes, the greater part of it adhering to the seeds. The mucilage separated by straining with pressure does not redden litmus, is not affected by iodine, nor precipitated by borax, alcohol or ferric chloride. The fat oil and albuminous matter of the seed have not been examined.

=Uses=—A decoction of the seeds (1 p. to 70 p. of water) is employed in India as a cooling, demulcent drink. The seeds powdered and mixed with sugar, or made gelatinous with water, are sometimes given in chronic diarrhœa.

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POLYGONACEÆ

RADIX RHEI.

Rhubarb; F. Rhubarbe; G. Rhabarber.

=Botanical Origin=—No competent observer, as far as we know, has ever ascertained as an eye-witness the species of Rheum which affords the commercial rhubarb. Rheum officinale, from which it seems, at least partly, derived is the only species yielding a rootstock which agrees with the drug.

Rheum officinale Baillon is a perennial noble plant resembling the Common Garden Rhubarb, but of larger size. It differs from the latter in several particulars: the leaves spring from a distinct crown rising some inches above the surface of the ground; they have a subcylindrical petiole, which as well as the veins of the under side of the lamina is covered with a pubescence of short erect hairs. The lamina, the outline of which is orbicular, cordate at the base, is shortly 5-to 7-lobed, with the lobes coarsely and irregularly dentate; it attains 4 to 4½ feet in length and rather more in breadth. The first leaves in spring display before expanding the peculiar metallic red hue of copper.

The plant was discovered in South-eastern Tibet, where it is said to be often cultivated for the sake of its medicinal root; but it is supposed to grow in various parts of Western and North-western China, whence the supplies of rhubarb are derived. It was obtained by the French missionaries about the year 1867 for Dabry, French Consul at Hankow, who transmitted specimens to Dr. Soubeiran of Paris. From one of these which flowered at Montmorency in 1871, a botanical description was drawn up by Baillon.[1801]

To what extent the rhubarb of commerce is derived from this plant is not known. But that the latter may be a true source of the drug is supported by the fact, that there is at least no important discrepancy between it and the accounts and figures, scanty and imperfect though they are, given by Chinese authors and the old Jesuit missionaries; and still more by the agreement in structure which exists between its root and the Asiatic rhubarb of commerce.

We have engaged in 1873 Mr. Rufus Usher at Bodicott (see below, p. 500) to cultivate Rheum officinale, which is there admirably succeeding; but it must be granted that as yet the root, notwithstanding the most careful preparation in drying it, is far from displaying the rich yellow of the commercial drug. It is most obviously marked on the other hand with the characteristic ring of stellate markings, which we have constantly observed in many roots of Rheum officinale cultivated by us at Clapham Common near London, as well as at Strassburg or, by other observers, at Paris.

Rheum palmatum L., a species known as long as 1750, has always been supposed to yield also rhubarb, and this has again been asserted by the Russian Colonel Przewalski, who observed in 1872 and 1873 that plant in the Alpine parts of Tangut round the Lake Kuku-nor, in the Chinese province of Kansu, in 36°-38° North Lat.—Rheum palmatum has been frequently cultivated in Russian Asia and in many parts of Europe since the last century, but without producing a root agreeing with Chinese rhubarb. Now, Przewalski states that from this species the drug under notice is largely collected along the river Tetung-gol (or Datung-ho), a tributary of the upper Hoang-ho, northward of the Kuku-nor. Specimens of that root were largely brought to St. Petersburg by Przewalski, but Dragendorff expressly points out in his Jahresbericht for 1877 (p. 78) that it is dissimilar to true rhubarb.

[1801] Adansonia, x. 246; Association Française pour l’avancement de la Science, Comptes Rendus de la 1ʳᵉ Session, 1872. 514-529. pl. x.—The figure which is reproduced in Lanessan’s French translation of the Pharmacographia, ii. (Paris, 1878) 210, gives a good idea of the highly ornamental character of Rheum officinale.

=History=[1802]—The Chinese appear to have been acquainted with the properties of rhubarb from a period long anterior to the Christian era, for the drug is treated of in the herbal called Pen-king, which is attributed to the Emperor Shen-nung, the father of Chinese agriculture and medicine, who reigned about 2700 B.C. The drug is named there Huang-liang, yellow, excellent, and Ta-huang, the great yellow.[1803] The latter name also occurs in the great Geography of China, where it is stated that rhubarb was a tribute of the province Si-ning-fu, eastward of Lake Kuku-nor,[1804] from about the 7th to the 10th centuries of our era.

As regards Western Asia and Europe, we find a root called ῤᾶ or ῤῆον, mentioned by Dioscorides as brought from beyond the Bosphorus. The same drug is alluded to in the fourth century by Ammianus Marcellinus,[1805] who states that it takes its name from the river Rha (the modern Volga), on whose banks it grows. Pliny describes a root termed Rhacoma, which when pounded yielded a colour like that of wine but inclining to saffron, and was brought from beyond Pontus.

The drug thus described is usually regarded as rhubarb, or at least as the root of some species of Rheum, but whether produced in the regions of the Euxine (Pontus), or merely received thence from remoter countries, is a question that cannot be solved.

It is however certain that the name Radix pontica or Rha ponticum, used by Scribonius Largus[1806] and Celsus,[1807] was applied in allusion to the region whence the drug was received. Lassen has shown that trading caravans from Shensi in Northern China arrived at Bokhara as early as the year 114 B.C. Goods thus transported might reach Europe either by way of the Black Sea, or by conveyance down the Indus to the ancient port of Barbarike. Vincent suggests[1808] that the rha imported by the first route would naturally be termed rha-ponticum, while that brought by the second might be called rha-barbarum.

We are not prepared to accept this plausible hypothesis. It receives no support from the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (circa A.D. 64), whose list of the exports of Barbarike[1809] does not include rhubarb; nor is rhubarb named among the articles on which duty was levied at the Roman custom-house of Alexandria (A.D. 176-180).[1810]

The terms Rheum barbarum vel barbaricum or Reu barbarum occur in the writings of Alexander Trallianus[1811] about the middle of the 6th century, and in those of Benedictus Crispus,[1812] archbishop of Milan, and Isidore[1813] of Seville, who both flourished in the 7th century. Among the Arabian writers on medicine, the younger Mesue, in the early part of the 11th century, mentions the rhubarb of China as superior to the Barbaric or Turkish.[1814] Constantinus Africanus[1815] about the same period speaks of Indian and Pontic Rheum, the former of which he declares to be preferable. In 1154 the celebrated Arabian geographer Edrisi[1816] mentions rhubarb as a product of China, growing in the mountains of Buthink—probably the environs of north-eastern Tibet near Lake Tengri Nor (or Bathang in Western Szechuen?).

[1802] For further particulars see Flückiger, Pharm. J. vi. (1876) 861; also Proc. Americ. Pharm. Assoc. 1876. 130, with fig. showing Rheum officinale grown in a poor soil.

[1803] Bretschneider, Chinese Botanical Works, Foochow, 1870. 2.

[1804] Flückiger, l.c.

[1805] Scriptores Historiæ Romanæ latini veteres, ii. (1743) 511 (Amm. Marc. xxii. c. 8.)

[1806] De Compositione Medicamentorum, c. 167.

[1807] De Medicinâ. lib. v. c. 23.

[1808] Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, ii. (1807) 389.

[1809] Ibid., op. cit. ii. 390.

[1810] Ibid., op. cit. ii. 686.

[1811] Lib. viii. c. 3 (Haller’s edition).

[1812] Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus, lxxxix. 374.

[1813] Migne. op. cit., lxxxii. 628. The explanation given by Isidore is this:—“Reubarbarum, sive Reuponticum: illud quod trans Danubium in solo barbarico; istud quod circa Pontum colligitur, nominatum est. Reu autem radix dicitur. Reubarbarum ergo, quasi radix barbara. Reuponticum quasi radix pontica.” But Isidore was fond of such derivations.

[1814] Ravedsceni, Raved barbarum, and Raved Turchicum are the terms used in the Latin translations we have consulted.

[1815] De omnibus medico cognitu necessariis, Basil. 1539. 354.

[1816] Translation of Jaubert, i. (Paris, 1836) 494.

Rhubarb in the 12th century was probably imported from India, as we may infer from the tariff of duties levied at the port of Acon in Syria, in which document[1817] it is enumerated along with many Indian drugs. A similar list of A.D. 1271, relating to Barcelona, mentions Ruibarbo.[1818] In a statute of the city of Pisa called the Breve Fundacariorum, dating 1305, rhubarb (ribarbari) is classified with commodities of the Levant and India.[1819]

The first and almost the only European who has visited the rhubarb-yielding countries of China is the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo,[1820] who speaking of the province of Tangut says—“ ... et par toutes les montagnes de ces provinces se treuve le reobarbe en grant habondance. Et illec l’achatent les marchans et le portent par le monde.”

A sketch of the history of rhubarb would be incomplete without some reference to the various routes by which the drug has been conveyed to Europe from the western provinces of the Chinese Empire, and which have given rise to the familiar designations of Russian, Turkey and China Rhubarb.[1821]

[1817] Assises de Jérusalem contained in the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Lois, ii. (1843) 176.

[1818] Capmany, Memorias de ... Barcelona, i. (1779) 44.

[1819] Bonaini, Statuti inediti della città di Pisa dal xii al xiv secolo, iii. (Firenze, 1857) 106. 115.

[1820] Pauthier, Le Livre de Marco Polo ... rédigé en français sous sa dictée en 1298 par Rusticien de Pise, i. (1865) 165. ii. 490.

[1821] For further particulars, see my paper mentioned at page 493, note 1.—F. A. F.

The first route is that over the barren steppes of Central Asia by Yarkand, Kashgar, Turkestan, and the Caspian to Russia; the second by the Indus or the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and Alexandria, or by Persia to Syria and Asia Minor; and the third by way of Canton, the only port of the Chinese Empire which, previous to the year 1842, held direct communication with Europe.

In 1653 China first permitted Russia to trade on her actual frontiers. The traffic in Chinese goods was thereupon diverted from the line of the Caspian and Black Sea further north, taking its way from Tangut across the steppes of the high Gobi, and through Siberia by Tobolsk to Moscow. Thus it is mentioned in 1719 that Urga on the north edge of the Gobi desert was the principal depôt for rhubarb. From the earliest times, Bucharian merchants appear to have been agents on this traffic, the producers of the drug never concerning themselves about its export.

Consequent on the rectification of frontier in 1728, a line of custom-houses was established by treaty between Russia and China, whereby the commerce, previously unrestricted, was limited to the government caravans which passed the frontier only at Kiachta and at Zuruchaitu, south of Nerchinsk. The latter place always remained unimportant, while Kiachta and the opposite Chinese town of Maimatchin became the staple depôts of rhubarb.

The root was subjected to special control as early as 1687-1697 by the Russian Government, who finally monopolized the trade about 1704. Caravans fitted out by the Crown alone brought the drug to Moscow, until 1762, when the caravan-trade was for a while thrown open. It was not until this period that the export of rhubarb became considerable, although the stringent regulations, established in 1736, were still maintained. The surveillance of rhubarb was exercised at Kiachta in a special court or office called the Brake,[1822] under instructions from the Russian Minister of War, by an apothecary appointed for six years, the object being to remove from the rhubarb brought for inspection all inferior or spurious pieces, and to improve the selected drug by trimming, paring and boring. It was then carefully dried, and packed in chests, which were sown up in linen, and rendered impervious to wet by being pitched and then covered with hide. The drug was dispatched, but only in quantities of 1000 puds (40,000 lb.), once a year by way of Lake Baikal and Irkutsk to Moscow, whence it was transmitted to St. Petersburg, to be there delivered to the Crown apothecaries and in part to be sold to druggists.

We are indebted for these accounts chiefly to Calau,[1823] an apothecary appointed to supervise the examination of rhubarb, and who resided a long time at Kiachta. An exact account of the remarkable policy of the Russian Government in relation to that drug was also given by Von Schröders[1824] in 1864.

So long as China kept all her ports closed to foreign commerce except Canton in the extreme south, a large supply of fine rhubarb found its way to Europe by way of Russia. But the unpleasant accompaniments of the Russian supervision, which was exercised with unsparing severity,[1825] and the extreme tediousness of the land-transport, made the Chinese very ready to accept an easier outlet for their goods. Accordingly we find that the opening of a number of ports in the north of China exerted a very depressing influence on the trade of Kiachta, which was augmented by the rebellion that raged in the interior of China for some years from 1852.

On these accounts Russia in 1855 removed certain restrictions on the trade, though without abandoning the Rhubarb Office. She withdrew in 1860 the custom-house to Irkutsk, and declared Kiachta a free port, while by the treaty with China of November 1860, she insisted on that country abandoning all restrictions on trade.

But the overland rhubarb trade had already been destroyed: the Chinese, tempted by the increased demand occasioned by the new trading-ports, became less careful in the collection and curing of the root, while the Russians insisted with the greatest strictness on the drug being of the accustomed quality. Hence it happened that from 1860 hardly any rhubarb was delivered at Kiachta, either for the government use or to private traders; and in 1863 the Rhubarb Office was abolished.

[1822] From the German word Bracke, the name applied to persons appointed for the examination of merchandize brought to the ports of the Baltic.

[1823] Gauger’s Rep. für Pharm. und Chemie, 1842. 452-457; Pharm. Journ. ii. (1843) 658.

[1824] Canstatt’s Jahresbericht for 1864. i. 35-42.

[1825] Thus in 1860 the Russians compelled the Chinese to burn 6000 lb. of rhubarb, on the pretext that it was too small!

Thus the so-called Russian or Muscovitic or Crown Rhubarb, familiarly known in England as Turkey Rhubarb, a drug which for its uniformly good quality long enjoyed the highest reputation, has become a thing of the past, which can only now be found in museum collections. It began to appear in English commerce at the commencement of the last century. Alston,[1826] who lectured on botany and materia medica at Edinburgh in 1720, speaks of rhubarb as brought from Turkey and the East Indies,—“and of late, likewise from Muscovy.”

It has been shown (p. 494) that rhubarb was shipped from Syria in the 12th century. Vasco da Gama[1827] mentions it in 1497 among the exports of Alexandria. In fact, the drug was carried from the far east to Persia, whence it was brought by caravans to Aleppo, Tripoli, Alexandria, and even to Smyrna. From these Levant ports it reached Europe, and was distributed as Turkey Rhubarb; while that which was shipped direct from China, or by way of India, became known as China, Canton, or East India Rhubarb. The latter was already the more common sort in England as early as 1640.[1828]

As the rhubarb of the Levant disappeared from trade, that of Russia took not only its place but likewise its name, until the term “Turkey Rhubarb” came to be the accepted designation of the drug imported from Russia. This strange confusion of terms was not however prevalent on the Continent, but was chiefly limited to British trade.

The risk and expense of the enormous land-transport over almost the whole breadth of Asia, caused rhubarb in ancient times to be one of the very costly drugs. Thus at Alexandria in 1497, it was valued at twelve times the price of benzoin. In France in 1542,[1829] it was worth ten times as much as cinnamon, or more than four times the price of saffron. At Ulm in 1596,[1830] it was more costly than opium. A German price-list of the magistrate of Schweinfurt, of 1614, shows Radix Rha Barbari to be six times as dear as fine myrrh, and more than twice the price of opium. An official English list[1831] giving the price of drugs in 1657, quotes opium as 6_s._ per lb., scammony 12_s._, and rhubarb 16_s._

=Production and Commerce=—The districts of the Chinese Empire which produce rhubarb extend over a vast area. They are comprised in the four northern provinces of China Proper, known as Chihli, Shansi, Shensi,[1832] and Honan; the immense north-western province of Kansuh, formerly partly included in Shensi, but now extending across the desert of Gobi and to the frontiers of Tibet; the province of Tsing-hai inhabited by Mongols, which includes the great salt lake of Koko-nor and the districts of Tangut, Sifan, and Turfan; and lastly the mountains of the western province of Szechuen. The plant is found on the pasturages of the high plateaux, growing particularly well on spots that have been enriched by encampments.

[1826] Lectures on the Mat. Med. i. (1770) 502.

[1827] Roteiro da viagem de Vasco da Gama, por A. Herculano e o Barão de Castello de Paiva, ed. 2. Lisboa, 1861. 115.—For an abstract of the “Roteiro,” see Flückiger, Documente zur Geschichte der Pharm. 1876. 13.

[1828] Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum, 1640. 155.

[1829] Leber, Appréciation de la fortune privée au moyen âge, éd. 2. 1847. 308-9.

[1830] Reichard, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Apotheken, Ulm, 1825. 208.

[1831] Book of the Values of Merchandize imported, according to which Excize is to be paid by the First Buyer, Lond. 1657.

[1832] According to Consul Hughes of Hankow, San-yuan in Shensi (north of Sin-ganfu) is one of the principal marts for rhubarb.

What little we know regarding the production of rhubarb and its preparation for the market, from Catholic missionaries,[1833] is of a rather meagre and unsatisfactory character. The root is dug up at the beginning of autumn when the vegetation of the plant is on the decline, and the operation is probably continued for a few months, or in some districts for the whole winter. It is cleaned, its cortical part sliced off, and the root cut into pieces for drying. This is performed either by the aid of fire-heat, or by simple exposure to sun and air, or the pieces are first partially dried on a hot stone, and then strung on a cord and suspended until the desiccation is complete.

According to F. von Richthofen[1834] the best rhubarb is collected exclusively from plants growing wild in the high alps of western Szechuen, especially in the Bayankara range, between the sources of the Hoang-ho and the rivers Ya-lung-Kiang and Min-Kiang. This variety is chiefly known under the name Shensi rhubarb, although the inhabitants of the province of Szechuen pretend the superiority of the drug of their own country. The important places for the commodity are Sining-fu in the province of Kansu, and Kwan-hien in Szechuen. In the plain of Tshing-tu-fu, according to Richthofen, rhubarb is cultivated in fields, but its product is stated to be much inferior to that of the true plant which is said not to succeed under culture.

Rhubarb is now purchased for the European market chiefly at Hankow on the upper Yangtsze, whither it is brought from the provinces of Shensi, Kansu, and Szechuen. From Hankow it is sent down to Shanghai, and there shipped for Europe. The exports from Hankow are stated in official documents[1835] to have amounted to the following numbers of peculs (one pecul = 133⅓ lb. = 60·479 kilogrammes):

1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 2985 3425 2866 3398 3370 3859 3167

In 1877 there were exported by way of Hankow 2096 peculs from Shensi and 3385 peculs from Szechuen.—From all the Chinese ports, 5124 peculs of rhubarb were shipped in 1874.

Much smaller quantities (554 peculs in 1872, 1055 peculs in 1874) are shipped from Tientsin; and there are occasional exportations from Canton, Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo. The imports of rhubarb into the United Kingdom in 1870 amounted to 343,306 lb., the estimated value of which was £62,716.[1836]

We have no information about the rhubarb which is stated by Bellew[1837] to grow on the hills near Kayn or Ghayn in eastern Persia (about 32½° N. lat.).

[1833] Chauveau, Vicar Apostolic of Tibet (1870), and Biet, a French missionary, both quoted by Collin in his thesis Des Rhubarbes, Paris, 1871. 22. 24.

[1834] Petermann’s Geograph. Mittheilungen, viii. (1873) 302.

[1835] Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports of China for 1870; Commercial Reports from Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, 1872. No. 3. p. 57, and 1874 (1875) No. 5.

[1836] Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom for 1870. 79.

[1837] From the Indus to the Tigris, London, 1874. 321.

=Description=—China Rhubarb as imported into Europe[1838] consists of portions of a massive root which display considerable diversity of form, arising from the various operations of paring, slicing and trimming, to which they have been subjected. Thus some pieces are cylindrical or rather barrel-shaped, others conical, while a large proportion are plano-convex, and others again are of no regular shape. These forms are not all found in the same package, the drug being usually sorted into round and flat rhubarb. In dimensions we find 3 to 4 inches the commonest length, though an occasional piece 6 inches long or more may be met with. The width may be stated at 2 to 3 inches. The outer surface of the root is somewhat shrivelled, often exhibiting portions of a dark bark that have not been pared away. Many pieces are pierced with a hole, in which may be found the remains of a cord used to suspend the root while drying. The drug is dusted over with a bright brownish-yellow powder, on removal of which the outer side of the root is seen to have a rusty-brown hue, or viewed with a lens to be marked by the medullary rays, which appear as an infinity of short broken lines of deep brown, traversing a white ground.

The character which most readily distinguishes the rhubarb of China is that well-developed pieces, broken transversely, display these dark lines arranged as an internal ring of star-like spots. Although this character is by no means obvious in every piece of Chinese rhubarb, it is of some utility from the fact that in European rhubarb, such spots are generally wholly wanting, or at most occur only sparingly and in an isolated manner.

In judging of rhubarb, great stress is laid upon the appearance of the root when broken, and the circumstance of the fractured surface presenting no symptoms of decay, discoloration, or sponginess.[1839] In good rhubarb, the interior is found to be compact, and beautifully veined with reddish-brown and white, sometimes not unmixed with iron-grey. The root when chewed tastes gritty, by reason of the crystals it contains of oxalate of calcium; but it is besides bitter, astringent and nauseous. The odour is peculiar, and except by the druggist, is mostly regarded as very disagreeable.

Microscopic Structure—The tissue of rhubarb is made up of a white parenchyme, brown medullary rays and a few irregularly scattered very large fibro-vascular bundles, which are devoid of ligneous cells.

On a transverse fracture of specimens, which are not too much peeled, a narrow dark cambial zone may be distinguished. In that part of the root, only the medullary rays display the usual radial arrangement, and in the interior of the root no regular structure is met with. There is no well-marked pith, but the central portion of the tissue shows a mixture of white parenchyme and brown medullary rays running in every direction. In full-grown roots, the central part is separated from the cambial zone by the band of stellate patches[1840] already mentioned.

[1838] It is now often trimmed by wholesale druggists to simulate the old Russian rhubarb.

[1839] The quality and appearance of rhubarb are far more regarded in England than on the Continent. To ensure a fine powder of brilliant hue, the drug is most carefully prepared, each root being split open, and any dark or decayed portion removed with a chisel or file, while the operator is not allowed to handle the drug except with leather gloves.

[1840] Their formation has been investigated by Schmitz, Proceedings of the “Naturforschende Gesellschaft zu Halle”; the author also shows that the drug is chiefly afforded by the rhizome.—An abstract of the paper will be found in Just’s Botanischer Jahresbericht, 1874. 461.

As to the contents of the white cells, they are loaded either with starch or tufted crystals of oxalate of calcium, the amount of the latter being especially liable to variation. Scheele, after having discovered the oxalic acid, pointed out in 1784 that the crystals under notice consist of that acid in combination with lime; he was the first to point out the true composition of those crystals which are of so wide a distribution throughout the vegetable kingdom. The medullary rays contain the substances peculiar to rhubarb, but none of them occur in a crystalline state.

=Chemical Composition=—The active constituent of the root has long been supposed to reside in the yellowish-red contents of the medullary rays. Schrader as early as 1807 prepared a Rhubarb-Bitter, to which he attributed the medicinal powers of the drug. Since then several substances of the same kind have been separated by various methods, and described under different names: such are the Rhabarberstoff of Trommsdorff, the Rheumin of Hornemann, the Rhabarberin of Buchner and Herberger, the Rhubarb-Yellow or Rheïn, and the Rhabarbaric Acid of Brandes.

Schlossberger and Döpping in 1844 first recognized among the above-named substances a definite chemical body named Chrysophan or Chrysophanic Acid,

{CH₃ } C₁₄H₅ { }O₂, {(OH)₂}

which had been found in 1843 by Rochleder and Heldt in the yellow lichen, Parmelia parietina. It partly forms the yellow contents of the medullary rays of rhubarb, and when isolated crystallizes in golden yellow needles or in plates. It dissolves in ether, alcohol, or benzol; though scarcely soluble in water, it is nevertheless extracted from the root to some extent by that solvent, probably by reason of some accompanying substance. Alkalis dissolve it, forming fine dark red solutions. Chrysophan, C₁₅H₁₀O₄, is a derivative of anthracene, C₁₄H₁₀, and closely allied to alizarin, C₁₄H₈O₄.

By precipitating alcoholic solutions of extract of rhubarb with ether, Schlossberger and Döpping obtained, together with chrysophan, resinous bodies which they named Aporetin, Phæoretin and Erythroretin.

De la Rue and Müller (1857) extracted from rhubarb, in addition to chrysophan, an allied substance, Emodin, which crystallizes in orange-coloured prisms, sometimes as much as two inches long. Its constitution was subsequently found to agree with the formula

{CH₃ } C₁₄H₄ { }O₂. {(OH)₃}

Kubly (1867) has obtained from rhubarb the following constituents:—

1. Rheo-tannic Acid, C₂₆H₂₆O₁₄, a yellowish powder abundantly present in rhubarb, soluble in water or alcohol, not in ether. Its solutions produce blackish-green precipitates with persalts of iron, and greyish ones slowly turning blue, with protosalts of the same.

2. Rheumic Acid (Rheumsäure), C₂₀H₁₆O₉, obtained as a reddish-brown powder, by boiling rheo-tannic acid with a dilute mineral acid, a fermentable sugar being developed at the same time. Rheumic acid exhibits nearly the same reactions as rheo-tannic acid, but is very sparingly soluble in cold water. It partly pre-exists in rhubarb.

3. Neutral colourless substance, sparingly soluble in hot water, and separating from the latter in prismatic crystals of the formula C₁₀H₁₂O₄; no name has yet been given to it. A “white crystalline resin” (and a dark brown crystalline resin) has been isolated in 1878 by Dragendorff.

4. Phæoretin, C₁₆H₁₆O₇, agreeing with the substance thus named by Schlossberger and Döpping. It is a brown powder, soluble in alcohol or in acetic acid, but not in ether, chloroform or water.

5. Chrysophan, described above.

According to Dragendorff (1878) mucilaginous matters occur in the different varieties of rhubarb to the amount of from 11 to 17 per cent. He states them to consist of mucilage (properly so called), arabic acid, metarabic acid and pararabin, and moreover enumerates also pectose among the constituents of the drug.

Small quantities of albuminoid substances, malic acid, fat and sugar have also been met with in rhubarb. As to its mineral constituents, their amount is exceedingly variable. Two samples of good China Rhubarb dried at 100° C. and incinerated, yielded us respectively 12·9 and 13·87 per cent. of ash. Another sample, which we had particularly selected on account of its pale tint, afforded no less than 43·27 per cent. of ash. The ash consists of carbonates of calcium and potassium. English rhubarb from Banbury (portions of a large specimen) left after incineration 10·90 per cent. of ash.

From a practical point of view the chemical history of rhubarb is far from satisfactory, for we are still ignorant to what principle the drug owes its therapeutic value, or what are the pharmaceutical preparations in which the active matter may be most appropriately exhibited. Chrysophan is said to act as a purgative, but less powerfully than rhubarb itself.

=Uses=—Rhubarb is one of the commonest and most valuable purgatives; it is also taken as a stomachic and tonic.

=Substitutes=—These are found in the roots of the various species of Rheum cultivated in Europe. In most countries, the cultivation of rhubarb for medicinal use has at some time been attempted. Yet in but few instances has it been persistently carried on; and though the drug produced has often been of good appearance, it has failed to gain the confidence of medical men, and to acquire much importance in the drug-market. The European rhubarb most interesting from our point of view is

English Rhubarb—So early as 1535, Andrew Boorde, an English Carthusian monk and practitioner of medicine, obtained seeds of rhubarb, which he sent as “a grett tresure” to Sir Thomas Cromwell, Secretary of State to Henry VIII.; but as he says they “come owtt of barbary” we must be allowed to hold their genuineness as doubtful.[1841]

In the following century, namely about the year 1608, Prosper Alpinus of Padua cultivated as the True Rhubarb a plant which is now known as Rheum Rhaponticum L., a native of Southern Siberia and the regions of the Volga.[1842] From this stock, Sir Matthew Lister, physician to Charles I., procured seeds when in Italy, and gave them to Parkinson,[1843] who raised plants from them.

[1841] Boorde’s Introduction and Dyetary, reprinted by the Early English Text Society, 1870. 56.

[1842] Prosper Alpinus, De Rhapontico, Lugd. Bat. 1718.

[1843] Theatrum Botanicum, 1640. 157.

Collinson obtained rhubarb plants from seeds procured in Tartary, and sent to him in 1742 by Professor Siegesbeck of St. Petersburg.[1844]

About 1777 Hayward, an apothecary of Banbury in Oxfordshire, commenced the cultivation of rhubarb with plants of Rh. Rhaponticum, raised from seeds sent from Russia in 1762. The drug he produced was so good that the Society of Arts awarded him in 1789 a silver medal, and in 1794 a gold medal.[1845] The Society also awarded medals about the same time (1789-1793) to growers of rhubarb in Somersetshire, Yorkshire, and Middlesex, some of whom, it appears, cultivated Rh. palmatum. On the death of Hayward in 1811, his rhubarb plants came into the possession of Mr. P. Usher, by whose descendants, Mr. R. Usher and sons, they are still cultivated at Bodicott, a village near Banbury.

The authors of this book had the pleasure of inspecting the rhubarb fields of Messrs. Usher on Sept. 4, 1872, and of seeing the whole process of preparing the root for the market.[1846] The land under cultivation is about 17 acres, the soil being a rich friable loam. The roots are taken from the ground during the autumn up to the month of November. It is considered advantageous that they should be 6 or 7 years old, but they are seldom allowed to attain more than 3 or 4 years. The clumps of root as removed from the field to the yard, where the trimming takes place, are of huge size, weighing with the earth attached to them as much as 60 or 70 lb. They are partially cleaned, the smaller roots are cut off, and the large central portion is rapidly trimmed into a short, cylindrical mass the size of a child’s head. This latter subsequently undergoes a still further paring, and is finally sliced longitudinally; the other and less valuable roots are also pared, trimmed, and assorted according to size. The fresh roots are fleshy, easily cut, and of a beautiful deep yellow. All are dried in buildings constructed for the purpose, and heated by flues. The drying occupies several weeks. The root after drying has a shrivelled, unsightly appearance, which may be remedied by paring and filing. The finished drug has to be stored in a warm dry place.

When well prepared, Banbury rhubarb is of excellent appearance. The finest pieces, which are semi-cylindrical, are quite equal in size to the drug of China. The colour is as good, and the fractured surface exhibits pink markings not less distinct and brilliant. Even the smaller roots, which are dried as sticks, have internally a good colour, and afford a fine powder. But the odour is somewhat different from that of Chinese rhubarb; the taste is less bitter but more mucilaginous and astringent, and the root is of a more spongy, soft, and brittle texture. The structure is the same as that of the Chinese rhubarb, except that, as already stated, the star-like spots, if present, are isolated, and not arranged in a regular zone.

The drug commands but a low price, and is chiefly sold, it is said, for exportation in the state of powder. It is not easily purchased in London.

[1844] Dillwyn, Hortus Collinsonianus, 1843. 45.

[1845] Trans. of Soc. of Arts, viii. (1790) 75; xii. (1794) 225.

[1846] No use is made of the leaves.—Some further particulars are given by Holmes, Pharm. Journal, vii. (1877) 1017.

French and German Rhubarb—The cultivation of rhubarb was commenced in France in the latter half of the last century, and has been pursued with some enthusiasm in various localities. The species grown were Rheum palmatum L., Rh. undulatum L., Rh. compactum L., and Rh. Rhaponticum L. The first was thought by Guibourt[1847] to afford a root more nearly approaching than any other the rhubarb of China; but it is that which is cultivated the least readily, the central root being liable to premature decay. Both this plant and Rh. undulatum were formerly cultivated by order of the Russian Government on a large scale at Kolywan and Krasnojarsk in Southern Siberia, but the culture has, we believe, been long abandoned.[1848]

As to France, it appears from inquiries we have lately made (1873), that except in the neighbourhood of Avignon and in a few other scattered localities, the cultivation has now ceased.

Rheum Rhaponticum is the source of the rhubarb which is produced at Austerlitz and Auspitz in Moravia, and at Ilmitz, Kremnitz and Frauenkirchen in Hungary. Some rhubarb is also produced in Silesia from Rh. Emodi Wall. (Rh. australe Don.).

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MYRISTICEÆ

MYRISTICA.

Nuclei Myristicæ, Semen Myristicæ, Nux moschata; Nutmeg; F. Muscade, Noix de Muscade; G. Muskatnuss.

=Botanical Origin=—Myristica fragrans Houttuyn (M. moschata Thunb., M. officinalis Linn. f.), a handsome, bushy, evergreen tree,[1849] with dark shining leaves, growing in its native islands to a height of 40 to 50 feet. It is found wild in the very small volcanic group of Banda, from Damma to Amboina, in Ceram, Bouro, Jilolo (Halmahera), the western peninsula of New Guinea, and in many of the adjacent islands, but it is not indigenous to any of the islands westward of these, or to the Philippines (Crawfurd).

The nutmeg tree has been introduced into Bencoolen on the west coast of Sumatra, Malacca, Bengal, the islands of Singapore and Penang, as well as Brazil and the West Indies; but it is only in a very few localities that the cultivation has been attended with success.

In its native countries the tree comes into bearing in its ninth year, and is said to continue fruitful until 60 or even 80 years old, yielding annually as many as 2000 fruits. It is diœcious, and one male tree furnishes pollen sufficient for twenty female.

=History=—It has been generally believed that neither the nutmeg nor mace was known to the ancients. C. F. Ph. von Martius[1850] however maintains that mace was alluded to in the comedies of Plautus,[1851] written about two centuries before the Christian era.

[1847] Histoire des Drogues, ii. (1849) 398.

[1848] Twelve chests of this rhubarb, said to be of the crop of 1793, which had been lying in the Russian Government warehouses, were offered for sale in London, Dec. 1, 1853. Samples of the drug now 80 years old are in our possession, and still sound and good.

[1849] Most beautifully figured by Blume, “Rumphia” i. (1835) tab. 55; Myristica fatua, ii. 59.

[1850] Flora Brasiliensis, fasc. 11-12. 133; also in Buchner’s Repertorium für Pharmacie, ix. (1860) 529-538.

[1851] Pseudolus, act. iii. scena 2.

The words Macer, Macar, Machir or Macir, occurring in the writings of Scribonius Largus, Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny are thought by Martius to refer in each instance to mace. But that the substance designated by these names was not mace, but the bark of a tree growing in Malabar, was pointed out by Acosta nearly three centuries ago, and by many subsequent writers, and, as we think, with perfect correctness.[1852]

Nutmegs and mace were imported from India at an early date by the Arabians, and thus passed into western countries. Aëtius, who was resident at the court of Constantinople about the year 540, appears to have been acquainted with the nutmeg, if that at least is intended by the term Nuces Indicæ, prescribed together with cloves, spikenard, costus, calamus aromaticus and snadal-wood, as an ingredient of the Suffumigium moschatum.[1853]

Masudi,[1854] who appears to have visited India in A.D. 916-920, pointed out that the nutmeg, like cloves, areca nut and snadal-wood, was a product of the eastern islands of the Indian Archipelago. The Arabian geographer Edrisi, who wrote in the middle of the 12th century, mentions both nutmegs and mace as articles of import into Aden;[1855] and again “Nois mouscades” are among the spices on which duty was levied at Acre in Palestine, circa A.D. 1180.[1856] About a century later, another Arabian author, Kazwini,[1857] expressly named the Moluccas as the native country of the spices under notice.

The Sanskrit name of the nutmeg tree most commonly in use, also with Susruta, is Jātī (Dr. Rice).

One of the earliest references to the use of nutmegs in Europe occurs in a poem written about 1195, by Petrus D’Ebulo,[1858] describing the entry into Rome of the Emperor Henry VI., prior to his coronation in April 1191. On this occasion the streets were fumigated with aromatics, which are enumerated in the following line:—

“Balsama, thus, aloë, myristica, cynnama, nardus.”

By the end of the 12th century, both nutmegs and mace were found in Northern Europe,—even in Denmark, as may be inferred from the allusion to them in the writings of Harpestreng.[1859] In England, mace, though well known, was a very costly spice, its value between A.D. 1284 and 1377 being about 4_s._ 7_d._ per lb., while the average price of a sheep during the same period was but 1_s._ 5_d._, and of a cow 9_s._ 5_d._[1860] It was also dear in France, for in the Compte de l’exécution of the will of Jeanne d’Evreux, queen of France, in 1372, six ounces of mace are appraised per ounce at 3 sols 8 deniers, equal to about 8_s._ 3_d._ of our present money.[1861]

[1852] Mérat et De Lens, Dict. de Mat. Méd. iv. (1832) 173.—The tree is, we think, Ailantus malabarica DC., order of the Simarubeæ.

[1853] Aëtius, tetrabiblos iv. serm. 4. c. 122.—It must however be admitted that Nux Indica in mediæval authors usually signifies the Coco-nut, but also sometimes Nux vomica or even Areca nut. For particulars see Flückiger, Documente zur Geschichte der Pharm. 1876. 18.

[1854] Les prairies d’or, i. (1861) 341.

[1855] Géographie, i. (1836) 51.

[1856] In the work quoted at p. 282, note 3.

[1857] Kosmographie, übersetzt von Ethé, i. (1869) 227.

[1858] Carmen de motibus siculis, Basil., 1746. 23.—A new edition of this work, by Prof. Winkelmann, was published in 1874.

[1859] Danske Laegebog, quoted by Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, iii. (1856) 537.

[1860] Rogers, Hist. of Agriculture and Prices in England, i. (1866) 361-362. 628.—It is remarkable that nutmegs are not mentioned, though mace is named repeatedly.

[1861] Leber, Appréciation de la fortune privée au moyen âge, éd. 2, 1847. 95.

The use of these spices was diffused throughout Europe long before the Portuguese in 1512 had discovered the mother plant in the isles of Banda. The Portuguese held the trade of the Spice Islands for about a century, when it was wrested from them by the Dutch, who pursued the same policy of exclusiveness that they had followed in the case of cloves and cinnamon. In order to secure their monopoly, they endeavoured to limit the trees to Banda and Amboyna, and to exterminate them elsewhere, which in fact they did at Ceram and the small neighbouring islands of Kelang and Nila. So completely was the spice trade in their hands, that the crops of sixteen years were said to be at one time in their warehouses, those of recent years being never thrown on the market. Thus the crop of 1744 was being sold in 1760, in which year an immense quantity of nutmegs and cloves was burned at Amsterdam lest the price should fall too low.[1862]

During the occupation of the Spice Islands by the English from 1796 to 1802, the culture of the nutmeg was introduced into Bencoolen and Penang,[1863] and many years afterwards into Singapore. Extensive plantations of nutmeg-trees were formed in the two islands last named, and by a laborious and costly system of cultivation were for many years highly productive.[1864] In 1860 the trees were visited by a destructive blight, which the cultivators were powerless to arrest, and which ultimately led to the ruin of the plantations, so that in 1867 there was no such thing as nutmeg cultivation either in Penang or Singapore.[1865]

Though so long valued in Europe and Asia, neither nutmegs nor mace seem to have been employed in former times as a condiment in the islands where they are indigenous.[1866]

=Collection and Preparation=—Almost the whole surface of the Banda Isles, observes Mr. Wallace,[1867] is planted with nutmeg-trees, which thrive under the shade of the lofty Canarium commune. The light volcanic soil, the shade, and the excessive moisture of these islands, where it rains more or less every month in the year, seem exactly to suit the nutmeg tree, which requires no manure and scarcely any attention.

In Bencoolen[1868] the trees bear all the year round, but the chief harvest takes place in the later months of the year, and a smaller one in April, May and June. The fruit as it splits is gathered by means of a hook attached to a long stick, the pericarp removed, and the mace carefully stripped off. The nuts are then taken to the drying house (a brick building), placed on frames, and exposed to the gentle heat of a smouldering fire, with arrangements for a proper circulation of air. This drying operation lasts for two months, during which time the nutmegs are turned every second or third day. At the end of this period, the kernels are found to rattle in the shell, an indication that the drying is complete. The shells are then broken with a wooden mallet, the nutmegs picked out and sorted, and finally rubbed over with dry sifted lime. In Banda the smaller and less sightly nutmegs are reserved for the preparation of the expressed oil.

[1862] Valmont de Bomare, Dict. d’Histoire Nat. iv. (1775) 297.—This author writes as an eye-witness of the destruction he has recorded:—“Le 10 Juin 1760, j’en ai vu à Amsterdam, près de l’Amirauté, un feu dont l’aliment étoit estimé huit millions argent de France: on devoit en brûler autant le lendemain. Les pieds des spectateurs baignoient dans l’huile essentielle de ces substances....”

[1863] How tempting the cultivation must have appeared, may be judged from the price of mace, which we find quoted on the 3rd January 1806, in the London Price Current (which gives only import prices), as 85_s._ to 90_s._ per lb.;—to these rates must be added the duty of 7_s._ 1_d._ per lb.

[1864] Seemann, Hooker’s Journ. of Bot. iv. (1852) 83.

[1865] Collingwood in Journ. of Linnean Society, Bot., x. (1869) 45.

[1866] Crawfurd, Dictionary of the Indian Islands, 1856. 304.—Much additional information will be found in this work.

[1867] The Malay Archipelago, i. (1869) 452.—See also Bickmore, Travels in the East Indian Archipelago, 1868. 225.

[1868] Lumsdaine, Pharm. Journ. xi. (1852) 516. For further information on the management of nutmeg plantations in Sumatra, consult the original paper.

The old commercial policy of the Dutch originated the singular practice of breaking the shell, and immersing the kernel of the artificially dried seed in milk of lime,—sometimes for a period of three months. This was done with a view to render impossible the germination of any nutmegs sent into the market. The folly of such a procedure was demonstrated by Teijsmann, who proved that mere exposure to the sun for a week is sufficient to destroy the vitality of the seed. By immersion in milk of lime many nutmegs are spoiled and the necessity is incurred of a second drying. Lumsdaine has also shown that even the dry liming process is, to say the least, entirely needless. Nutmegs are well preserved in their natural shell, in which state the Chinese have the good sense to prefer them.

The process of liming nutmegs is however still largely followed; and the prejudice in favour of the spice thus prepared is so strong in certain countries, that nutmegs not limed abroad have sometimes to be limed in London to fit them for exportation. Penang nutmegs are always imported in the natural state,—that is, un-limed.

=Description=—The fruit of Myristica fragrans is a pendulous, globose drupe, about 2 inches in diameter, and not unlike a small round pear. It is marked by a furrow which passes round it, and by which at maturity its thick fleshy pericarp splits into two pieces, exhibiting in its interior a single seed, enveloped in a fleshy foliaceous mantle or arillus, of fine crimson hue, which is mace. The dark brown, shining, ovate seed is marked with impressions corresponding to the lobes of the arillus; and on one side, which is of paler hue and slightly flattened, a line indicating the raphe may be observed.

The bony testa does not find its way into European commerce, the so-called nutmeg being merely the kernel or nucleus of the seed. Nutmegs exhibit nearly the form of their outer shell with a corresponding diminution in size. The London dealers esteem them in proportion to their size, the largest, which are about one inch long by ⁸/₁₀ of an inch broad, and four of which will weigh an ounce, fetching the highest price. If not dressed with lime, they are of a greyish brown, smooth yet coarsely furrowed and veined longitudinally, marked on the flatter side with a shallow groove. A transverse section shows that the inner seed-coat (endopleura) penetrates into the albumen in long narrow brown strips, reaching the centre of the seed, thereby imparting the peculiar marbled appearance familiar in a cut nutmeg.

At the base of the albumen and close to the hilum, is the embryo, formed of a short radicle with cup-shaped cotyledons, whose slit and curled edges penetrate into the albumen. The tissue of the seed can be cut with equal facility in any direction. It is extremely oily, and has a delicious aromatic fragrance, with a spicy rather acrid taste.

=Microscopic Structure=—The testa consists mainly of long, thin, radially arranged, rigid cells, which are closely interlaced and do not exhibit any distinct cavities. The endopleura which forms the adhering coat of the kernel and penetrates into it, consists of soft-walled, red-brown tissue, with small scattered bundles of vessels. In the outer layers the endopleura exhibits small collapsed cells; but the tissue which fills the folds that dip into the interior consists of much larger cells. The tissue of the albumen is formed of soft-walled parenchyme, which is densely filled with conspicuous starch-grains, and with fat, partly crystallized. Among the prismatic crystals of fat, large thick rhombic or six-sided tables may often be observed. With these are associated grains of albuminoid matter, partly crystallized.

=Chemical Composition=—After starch and albuminoid matter, the principal constituent of nutmeg is the fat, which makes up about a fourth of its weight, and is known in commerce by the incorrect name of Oil of Mace (see p. 507).

The volatile oil, to which the smell and taste of nutmegs are chiefly due, amounts to between 3 and 8 per cent.,[1869] and consists, according to Cloëz (1864), almost entirely of a hydrocarbon, C₁₀H₁₆, boiling at 165° C., which Gladstone (1872), who assigns it the same composition, calls Myristicene. The latter chemist found in the crude oil an oxygenated oil, Myristicol, of very difficult purification and possibly subject to change during the process of rectifying. It has a high boiling point (about 220° C.?) and the characteristic odour of nutmeg; unlike carvol with which it is isomeric, it does not form a crystalline compound with hydrosulphuric acid.

Oil of nutmegs, distilled in London by Messrs. Herrings and Co., examined in column 200 mm. long, we found to deviate the ray of polarized light, 15°·3 to the right; that of the Long Nutmeg (Myristica fatua Houtt.), furnished to us by the same firm, deviated 28°·7 to the right.

From the facts recorded by Gmelin,[1870] it would appear that oil of nutmeg sometimes deposits a stearoptene called Myristicin. We are not acquainted with such a deposit; yet we have been kindly furnished by Messrs. Herrings with a crystalline substance which they obtained during the latter part of the process of distilling both common and long nutmegs. It is a greyish greasy mass, which by repeated crystallizations from spirit of wine, we obtained in the form of brilliant, colourless scales, fusible at 54° C., and still possessing the odour of nutmeg. The crystals are readily soluble in benzol, bisulphide of carbon or chloroform, sparingly in petroleum ether; their solution in spirit of wine has a decidedly acid reaction, and is devoid of rotatory power. By boiling them with alcohol, sp. gr. 0·843, and anhydrous carbonate of sodium, we obtained a solution which, after removal of the alcohol, left a residuum perfectly soluble in boiling water, forming a jelly on cooling. By adding hydrochloric acid to the warm aqueous solution, the original crystallizable substance again made its appearance, yet almost devoid of odour. It is in fact nothing else than Myristic Acid (see page 508).[1871]

[1869] Messrs. Herrings & Co. of London have informed us, that 2874 lb. of nutmegs distilled in their laboratory afforded 67 lb. of essential oil, i.e. 2·33 per cent. But Messrs. Schimmel & Co., Leipzig, state (1878) that they obtain as much as from 6 to 8 per cent.

[1870] Chemistry, xiv. (1860) 389.

[1871] Yearbook of Pharmacy, 1874, 490.

=Production and Commerce=—The nutmegs and mace now brought into the market are to a large extent the produce of the Banda Islands,[1872] of which however only three, namely Lontar or the Great Banda, Pulo Ai, and Pulo Nera, have what are termed Nutmeg Parks. According to official statements of the Dutch, the first-named island possessed in 1864 about 266,000 fruit-bearing trees; Ternate on the western coast of Jilolo, 46,000; Menado in the island of Celebes, 35,000; and Amboyna, only 31,000. The nutmegs of the Banda Islands are shipped to Batavia. The quantity exported from Java in 1871 (all, we believe, from Batavia, and therefore the produce of the Banda Islands) is stated as 8107 peculs (1,080,933 lb.), of which 2300 peculs (306,666 lb.) were shipped to the United States, and a rather large quantity to Singapore.[1873] The last named port also shipped in the same year a very large quantity (310,576 lb.) of nutmegs to North America,[1874] and in 1877 the total export of nutmegs and mace from Singapore was 5323 peculs (709,733 lb.).

[1872] Some idea of the extremely small area of these famous islands may be gathered from the fact that the Great Banda, the largest of them, is but about 7 miles long by 2 miles broad; while the entire group occupies no more than 17·6 geographical square miles.

[1873] Consular Reports, Aug. 1873. 952-3. In 1875, 8990 peculs were exported from Java.

[1874] Blue Books for the Colony of the Straits Settlements for 1871, Singapore, 1872.

Nutmegs were exported from Padang in Sumatra in the year 1871, to the extent of 2766 peculs (368,800 lb.), chiefly to America and Singapore. The quantity annually imported into the United Kingdom ranges from 500,000 to 800,000 lb.

=Uses=—Nutmeg is a grateful aromatic stimulant, chiefly employed for flavouring other medicines. It is also in constant use as a condiment, though less appreciated than formerly.

Oleum Myristicæ expressum.

Oleum Macidis, Balsamum vel Oleum Nucistæ; Expressed Oil of Nutmegs, Nutmeg Butter, Oil of Mace; F. Beurre de Muscade; G. Muskatbutter, Muskatnussöl.

This article reaches England chiefly from Singapore, in oblong, rectangular blocks, about 10 inches long by 2½ inches square, enveloped in a wrapper of palm leaves. It is a solid unctuous substance of an orange-brown colour, varying in intensity of shade, and presenting a mottled aspect. It has a very agreeable odour and a fatty aromatic taste.

In operating on 2 lb. of nutmegs, first powdered and heated in a water-bath and pressed while still hot, we obtained 9 ounces of solid oil, equivalent to 28 per cent. This oil, which in colour, odour and consistence does not differ from that which is imported, melts at about 45° C.; and dissolves perfectly in two parts of warm ether or in four of warm alcohol sp. gr. ·800.

Nutmeg butter contains the volatile oil already described, to the extent of about six per cent., besides several fatty bodies. One of the latter, termed Myristin C₃H₅(O·C₁₄H₂₇O)₃, may be obtained by means of benzol, or by dissolving in ether that part of the butter of nutmeg which is insoluble in cold spirit of wine. The crystals of myristin melt at 31° C. By saponification they furnish glycerin, and Myristic Acid, C₁₄H₂₈O₂, the latter fusing at 53°·8 C. Playfair in 1841 was the first to isolate (in Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen) myristic acid. Myristin also occurs in spermaceti, coco-nuts, as well as, according to Mulder, in small quantity, in the fixed oils of linseed and poppy seed. Nutmegs according to Comar (1859) yield 10 to 12 per cent. of myristin.

That part of nutmeg butter, which is more readily soluble in spirit of wine or benzol, contains another fat, which however has not yet been investigated. It is accompanied by a reddish colouring matter.

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MACIS

Mace; F. Macis; G. Macis, Muskatblüthe.

=Botanical Origin=—Myristica fragrans Houttuyn (see p. 502). The seed which, deprived of its hard outer shell or testa, is known as the nutmeg, is enclosed when fresh in a fleshy net-like envelope, somewhat resembling the husk of a filbert. This organ, which is united, though not very closely, at the base of the stony shell both with the hilum and the contiguous portion of the raphe, of which parts it is an expansion, is termed arillus,[1875] and when separated and dried constitutes the mace of the shops. In the fresh state it is fleshy, and of a beautiful crimson; it envelopes the seed completely only at the base, afterwards dividing itself into broad flat lobes; which branch into narrower strips overlapping one another towards the summit.

[1875] On the nature and origin of this organ, see Baillon, Histoire des Plantes, ii. (1870) 499; also Dictionnaire de Botanique.

=History=—Included in that of the nutmeg (see preceding article).

=Description=—The mace, separated from the seed by hand, is dried in the sun, thereby losing its brilliant red hue and acquiring an orange-brown colour. It has a dull fatty lustre, exudes oil when pressed with the nail, and is horny, brittle, and translucent. Steeped in water it swells rather considerably. The entire arillus, compressed and crumpled by packing, is about 1¾ inches long with a general thickness of about ¹/₂₀ of an inch or even at ⅒ the base. Mace has an agreeable aromatic smell nearly resembling that of nutmeg, and a pungent, spicy, rather acrid taste.

=Microscopic Structure=—The uniform, small-celled, angular parenchyme is interrupted by numerous brown oil-cells of larger size. The inner part of the tissue contains also thin brown vascular bundles. The cells of the epidermis on either side are colourless, thick-walled, longitudinally extended, and covered with a peculiar cuticle of broad, flat, riband-like cells, which cannot however be removed as a continuous film. The parenchyme is loaded with small granules, to which a red colour is imparted by Millon’s test (solution of mercurous nitrate) and an orange hue by iodine. The granules consequently consist of albuminous matter, and starch is altogether wanting.

=Chemical Composition=—The nature of the chemical constituents of mace may be inferred from the following experiments performed by one of us:—17 grammes of finely powdered mace were entirely exhausted by boiling ether, and the latter allowed to evaporate. It left behind 5·57 grm., which after drying at 100° C. were diminished to 4·17. The difference, 1·40 grammes, answers to the amount of essential oil, of which consequently 8·2 per cent. had been present.

The residue, amounting to 24·5 per cent., was a thickish aromatic balsam, in which we have not been able to ascertain the presence of fat; it consisted of resin and semi-resinified essential oil. Alcohol further removed 1·4 per cent. of an uncrystallizable sugar, which reduced cupric oxide.

The drug having been thus treated with ether and with alcohol, yielded almost nothing to cold water, but by means of boiling water 1·8 per cent. of a mucilage was obtained, which turned blue by addition of iodine, or reddish violet if previously dried. This substance is not soluble in an ammoniacal solution of cupric oxide; it appears rather to be an intermediate body between mucilage and starch.[1876] The composition of mace is therefore very different from that of nutmeg.

As to the volatile oil, of which several observers have obtained from 7 to 9 per cent.,[1877] it is a fragrant colourless liquid which we found, when examined in a column 200 mm. long, deviated the ray 18°·8 to the right. Its greater portion consists according to Schacht (1862) of Macene, C₁₀H₁₆, boiling at 160° C., and distinguished from oil of turpentine by not forming a crystalline hydrate when mixed with alcohol and nitric acid. Koller (1865) states that macene is identical with the hydrocarbon of oil of nutmeg (myristicene), yet the latter is said by Cloëz to yield no solid compound when treated with hydrochloric gas. Macene on the other hand furnishes crystals of C₁₀H₁₆·HCl. Crude oil of mace contains, like that of nutmeg, an oxygenated oil, the properties of which have not yet been investigated.

=Commerce=—Mace, mostly the produce as it would appear of the Banda Islands, was shipped from Java in 1871 to the extent of 2101 peculs (282,133 lb.); and from Padang in Sumatra (excluding shipments to Java) to the amount of 457 peculs (60,933 lb.).[1878] The spice is exported principally to Holland, Singapore, and the United States; Great Britain receives about 60,000 to 80,000 lb. annually.

=Uses=—Mace is but rarely employed in medicine. It is chiefly consumed as a condiment.

[1876] See my paper: Ueber Stärke und Cellulose in Archiv der Pharm. 196 (1871) 31.—F. A. F.

[1877] In an actual experiment (1868) in the laboratory of Messrs. Herrings & Co., London, 23 lb. of mace yielded 23 oz. of volatile oil, which is equivalent to 6¼ per cent.; but Messrs. Schimmel & Co., Leipzig, obligingly inform us (1878) that they observed a percentage of from 11 to 17.

[1878] Consular Reports, August 1873. 952-3.

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LAURACEÆ

CAMPHORA.

Camphor,[1879] Common Camphor, Laurel Camphor; F. Camphre; G. Campher.

=Botanical Origin=—Cinnamomum Camphora Fr. Nees et Ebermaier (Laurus Camphora L., Camphora officinarum C. Bauh.), the Camphor tree or Camphor Laurel is widely diffused, being found throughout Central China and in the Japanese Islands. In China it abounds principally in the eastern and central provinces, as in Chekiang, Fokien and Kiangsi; but it is wanting, according to Garnier (1868), in Yünnan and Szechuen. It is plentiful, on the other hand, in the island of Formosa, where it covers the whole line of mountains from north to south, up to an elevation of 2000 feet above the level of the sea. It flourishes in tropical and subtropical countries, and forms a large and handsome tree in sheltered spots in Italy as far north as the Lago Maggiore. The leaves are small, shining, and glaucous beneath, and have long petioles; the stem affords excellent timber, much prized on account of its odour for making clothes’ chests and drawers of cabinets.

Dryobalanops aromatica, the camphor tree of Borneo and Sumatra, yields a peculiar camphor, which we shall describe further on.

=History=—The two kinds of Camphor afforded by the two trees just named have always been regarded by the Chinese as perfectly distinct substances, and in considering the history of camphor this fact must be borne in mind.

On perusing the accounts of Laurel Camphor given by Chinese writers,[1880] the remarkable fact becomes apparent, that although the tree was evidently well known in the 6th century, and probably even earlier, and is specially noticed on account of its valuable timber, no mention is made in connexion with it of any such substance as camphor.

Le-she-chin, the author of the celebrated herbal Pun-tsao-kang-muh, written in the middle of the 16th century, was well acquainted with the two sorts of camphor,—the one produced by the camphor laurel of his own country, the other imported from the Malay islands; and he narrates how the former was prepared by boiling the wood, and refined by repeated dry sublimations.

Marco Polo, towards the end of the 13th century, saw the forests of Fokien in South-eastern China, in which, says he, are many of the trees which give camphor.[1881] It would thus appear that Laurel Camphor was known as early as the time of Marco Polo, yet it is certain that the more ancient notices which we shall now quote have reference to the much valued Malay Camphor, which remains up to the present day one of the most precious substances of its class.

[1879] The word Camphor, generally written by old Latin authors Caphura, and by English Camphire, is derived from the Arabic Káfúr, which in turn is supposed to come from the Sanskrit Karpūra, signifying white.

[1880] Passages from several have been translated and kindly placed at our disposal by Mr. A. Wylie. Dr. Bretschneider of Pekin and Mr. Pauthier of Paris (see p. 494, note 7,) have also been good enough to aid us in the same manner.

[1881] Yule, Book of Ser Marco Polo, ii. (1871) 185.

There is no evidence that camphor reached Europe during the classical period of Greece and Rome. The first mention of it known to us occurs in one of the most ancient monuments of the Arabic language, the poems of Imru-l-Kais,[1882] a prince of the Kindah dynasty, who lived in Hadramaut in the beginning of the 6th century. Nearly at the same period, Aëtius of Amida (the modern Diarbekir) used camphor medicinally, but from the manner in which he speaks of it, it was evidently a substance of some rarity.[1883]

In fact, for many centuries subsequent to this period, camphor was regarded as one of the most rare and precious of perfumes. Thus, it is mentioned in A.D. 636, with musk, ambergris, and snadal-wood, among the treasures of Chosroes II., of the Sassanian dynasty of kings of Persia, in the palace at Madain on the Tigris, north of Babylon.[1884]

Among the immense mass of valuables dispersed at Cairo on the downfall of the Fatimite Khalif Mostanser in the 11th century, the Arabian historians[1885] enumerate with astonishment, besides vast quantities of musk, aloes wood, snadal-wood, amber, large stores of Camphor of Kaisur, and hundreds of figures of melons in camphor, adorned with gold and jewels, which were contained in precious vessels of gold and porcelain. One grain (crystal?) of camphor is mentioned as weighing 5 mithkals, one melon of the weight of 70 mithkals, was contained in a golden box weighing no less than 3,000 mithkals (1 mithkal = 71·49 gr. Troy = 4·63 grammes). It is also on record that about A.D. 642, Indian princes sent camphor as tribute or a gift to the Chinese Emperors;[1886]—further, that in the Teenpaou period (A.D. 742-755), the Cochinchinese brought to the Chinese court a tribute of Barus camphor, said by the envoy to be found in the trunks of old trees, the like of which for fragrance was never seen again.[1887] Masudi,[1888] four centuries later, mentions a similar present from an Indian to a Chinese potentate, when 1,000 menn[1889] of aloes-wood were accompanied by 10 menn of camphor, the choice quality of the latter being indicated by the remark that it was in pieces as large or larger than a pistachio-nut.

Again, between A.D. 1342 and 1352, an embassy left Pekin bearing a letter from the Great Khan to Pope Benedict XII., accompanied by presents of silk, precious stones, camphor, musk, and spices.[1890]

Ibn Batuta, the celebrated traveller, relates that after having visited the King of Sumatra, he was presented on leaving (a.d. 1347) with aloes-wood, camphor, cloves, and sandal-wood, besides provisions.

[1882] In the description of Arabia by Ibn Hagik el Hamdany, fol. 170 of the MS. at Aden (Prof. Sprenger).

[1883] He directs two ounces of camphor to be added to a certain preparation, provided camphor is sufficiently abundant.—Tetr. iv. sermo 4. c. 114

[1884] G. Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, i. (Mannheim, 1846) 75.

[1885] Quatremère, Mém. sur l’Egypte, ii. (1811) 366-375.—It is interesting to find that Káfúre-kaisúri, i.e., Kaisur Camphor, is a term still known in the Indian bazaars.

[1886] Käuffer, Geschichte von Ostasien, ii. (1859) 491.

[1887] Translation from the Chinese communicated by Mr. A. Wylie.

[1888] Les Prairies d’or, i. (Paris, 1861) 200.

[1889] The Arabian menâ or menn is equal to 2⅕ pounds Troy, or 933 grammes.

[1890] Yule, Cathay and the way thither, ii. 357.

Ishâk ibn Amrân, an Arabian physician living towards the end of the 9th century, and Ibn Khurdádbah, a geographer of the same period, were among the first to point out that camphor is an export of the Malayan Archipelago; and their statements are repeated by the Arabian writers of the middle ages, who all assert that the best camphor is produced in Fansúr. This place, also called Kansúr or Kaisúr, was visited in the 13th century by Marco Polo, who speaks of its camphor as selling for its weight in gold; Yule[1891] believes it to be the same spot as Barus, a town on the western coast of Sumatra, still giving a name to the camphor produced in that island.

From all these facts and many others that might be adduced,[1892] it undoubtedly follows that the camphor first in use was that found native in the trunk of the Sumatran Dryobalanops aromatica, and not that of the Camphor Laurel. At what period and at whose instigation the Chinese began to manufacture camphor from the latter tree is not known.

Camphor was known in Europe as a medicine as early as the 12th century, as is evident from the mention of it by the abbess Hildegard[1893] (who calls it ganphora), Otho of Cremona,[1894] and the Danish canon Harpestreng (ob. A.D. 1244).

Garcia de Orta states (1563) that it is the camphor of China which alone is exported to Europe, that of Borneo and Sumatra being a hundred times more costly, and all consumed by eastern nations. They partly devoted the latter to ritual purposes, as for instance embalming, partly to “eating,” i.e. for the preparation of the betel-leaves for chewing. Neuhof[1895] states that the other ingredients used in China for that purpose are: Areca nuts (see article Semen Arecæ) and lime or Lycium (see page 35), Caphur de Burneo, aloë (i.e. Aloë-wood, see Aloë), and musk. Kämpfer,[1896] who resided in Japan in 1690-92, and who figured the Japanese camphor tree under the name Laurus camphorifera, expressly declares the latter to be entirely different from the camphor tree of the Indian Archipelago. He further states that the camphor of Borneo was among the more profitable commodities imported into Japan by the Dutch, whose homeward cargoes included Japanese camphor to the extent of 6,000 to 12,000 lb. annually.[1897] This camphor was refined in Holland by a process long kept secret, and was then introduced into the market. In Pomet’s time (1694 and earlier), crude camphor was common in France, but it had to be sent to Holland for purification.

It is doubtful whether at that period, or even much later, any camphor was obtained from Formosa. Du Halde[1898] makes no allusion to it as a production of that island; nor does he mention it among the commodities of Emouy (Amoy), which was the Chinese port then in most active communication with Formosa.

[1891] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, ii. (1874) 282, 285.

[1892] For further historical details, compare my paper in the Schweizerische Wochenschrift für Pharmacie, 27 Sept., 4 and 11 Oct. 1867, or in Buchner’s Repertorium f. Pharmacie, xvii. (1868) 28.—F. A. F.

[1893] S. Hildegardis Opera Omnia, accurante J. P. Migne, Paris, 1855. 1145.

[1894] Choulant, Macer Floridus, Lips. 1832. 161.

[1895] Gesantschaft, etc. Amsterdam, 1666. 363.

[1896] Amœnitates exoticæ (1712) 770.

[1897] Hist. of Japan, translated by Scheuchzer, i. (1727) 353. 370.

[1898] Description de la Chine, i. (1735) 161.

=Production=—The camphor of European commerce is produced in the island of Formosa and in Japan. We have no evidence that any is manufactured at the present day in China, although very large trees, often from 8 to 9 feet in diameter, are common, for instance in Kiangsi, and camphor wood is an important timber of the Hankow market.

In Formosa, the camphor-producing districts lie in the narrow belt of debateable ground, which separates the border Chinese settlements from the territory still occupied by the aboriginal tribes. The camphor is prepared from the wood, which is cut into small chips from the trees, by means of a gouge with a long handle. In this process there is great waste, many trees being cut and then left with a large portion of valuable timber to perish. The next operation is to expose the wood to the vapour of boiling water, and to collect the camphor which volatilizes with the steam. For this purpose, stills are constructed thus:—a long wooden trough, frequently a hollowed trunk, is fixed over a furnace and protected by a coating of clay. Water is poured into it, and a board perforated with numerous small holes is luted over it. Above these holes the chips are placed and covered with earthen pots. A fire having been lighted in the furnace, the water becomes heated, and the steam passing through the chips, carries with it the camphor, which condenses in minute white crystals in the upper part of the pots. From these it is scraped out every few days, and is then very pure and clean. Four stills, each having ten pots placed in a row over one trough, are generally arranged under one shed. These stills are moved from time to time, according as the gradual exhaustion of timber in the locality renders such transfer desirable. A considerable quantity of camphor is however manufactured in the towns, the chips being conveyed thither from the country. A model of a much better still, which was contributed from Formosa to the Paris Exhibition in 1878, is perhaps referring to a town manufacture.

Camphor is brought from the interior to Tamsui, the chief port of Formosa, the baskets holding about half a pecul each (1 pecul = 133⅓ lbs.), lined and covered with large leaves. Upon arrival, it is stored in vats holding from 50 to 60 peculs each, or it is packed at once in the tubs, or lead-lined boxes, in which it is exported. From the vats or tubs there drains out a yellowish essential oil known as Camphor Oil, which is used by the Chinese in rheumatism.[1899] In 1877 hydraulic pressure has been established for the separation of the oil and moisture; the raw camphor loses about 20 per cent. of these admixtures.

Kämpfer in his account[1900] of the manufacture of camphor in the Japanese province of Satzuma and in the islands of Gotho, describes the boiling of the chips in an iron pot covered with an earthen head containing straw in which the camphor collects. In the province of Tosa, island of Sikok, there is now a still in use, which is quite conveniently combined with a cooling apparatus consisting of a wooden trough, over which cold water is flowing.[1901]

[1899] The foregoing particulars are chiefly extracted from the Trade Report of Tamsui by E. C. Taintor, Acting Commissioner of Customs, published in the Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1869, Shanghai, 1870, and from James Morrison’s Description of the island of Formosa, in the Geogr. Magazine, 1877, 263 and 319.

[1900] op. cit. p. 772.

[1901] Both of the above mentioned stills from Sikok and Formosa are figured in my “Account of the Paris Exhibition,” Archiv der Pharmacie, 214 (1879) 12.—F. A. F..

=Purification=—Camphor as it is exported from Japan and Formosa requires to be purified by sublimation. The crude drug consists of small crystalline grains, which cohere into irregular friable masses, of a greyish-white or pinkish hue. Dissolved in spirit of wine, it leaves from 2 to 10 per cent. of impurities consisting of gypsum, common salt, sulphur, or vegetable fragments.

In Europe, crude camphor is sublimed from a little charcoal or sand, iron filings or quicklime, and sent into the market as Refined Camphor in the form of large bowls or concave cakes, about 10 inches in diameter, 3 inches in thickness, and weighing from 9 to 12 lb.[1902] Each bowl has a large round hole at the bottom, corresponding to the aperture of the vessel in which the sublimation has been conducted. This operation is performed in peculiar glass flasks termed bomboloes, in the upper half of which the pure camphor concretes. These flasks having been charged and placed in a sand-bath, are rapidly heated to about 120°-190° C. in order to remove the water. Afterwards the temperature is slowly increased to about 204° C., and maintained during 24 hours. The flasks are finally broken.

As camphor is a neutral substance, the addition of lime probably serves merely to retain traces of resin or empyreumatic oil. Iron would keep back sulphur were any present.

In the United States the refiners use iron vessels; their product is in flat disks, about 16 inches in diameter by one inch in thickness.

The refining of camphor is carried on to a large extent in England, Holland, Hamburg, Paris, Bohemia (Aussig), in New York and Philadelphia. It is a process requiring great care on account of the inflammability of the product. The temperature must also be nicely regulated, so that the sublimate may be deposited not merely in loose crystals, but in compact cakes. In India where the consumption of camphor is very large, the natives effect the sublimation in a copper vessel, the charge of which is 1½ maunds (42 lb.): fire is applied to the lower part, the upper being kept cool.[1903]

=Description=—Purified Camphor forms a colourless crystalline, translucent mass, traversed by numerous fissures, so that notwithstanding a certain toughness, a mass can readily be broken by repeated blows. By spontaneous and extremely slow evaporation at ordinary temperatures, camphor sublimes in lustrous hexagonal plates or prisms, having but little hardness. If triturated in a mortar, camphor adheres to the pestle, so that it cannot be powdered per se. But if moistened with spirit of wine, ether, chloroform, methylic alcohol, glycerin, or an essential or fatty oil, pulverization is effected without difficulty. By keeping a short time, the powder acquires a crystalline form. With an equal weight of sugar, camphor may also be easily powdered.

Camphor melts at 175° C., boils at 204°, and volatilizes somewhat rapidly even at ordinary temperatures. To this latter property, combined with slight solubility, must be attributed the curious rotatory motion which small lumps of camphor (as well as barium butyrate, stannic bromide, chloral hydrate, and a few other substances) exhibit when thrown on to water.

[1902] These are the dimensions of the cakes manufactured in the laboratory of Messrs. Howards of Stratford, but it is obvious that they may vary with different makers.

[1903] Mattheson, England to Delhi, Lond. 1870, 474.

The solubility of camphor in water is very small, 1300 parts dissolving about one; but even this small quantity is partially separated on addition of some alkaline or earthy salt, as sulphate of magnesium. Alcohols, ethers, chloroform, carbon bisulphide, volatile and fixed oils and liquid hydrocarbons, dissolve camphor abundantly.

The sp. gr. of camphor at 0° C. and up to 6° is the same as that of water; yet at a somewhat higher temperature, camphor expands more quickly, so that at 10° to 12° C. its sp. gr. is only 0·992.

In concentrated solution or in a state of fusion, camphor turns the plane of polarization strongly to the right. Officinal solution of camphor (Spiritus Camphoræ) is too weak, and does not deviate the ray of light to a considerable amount.[1904] Crystals of camphor are devoid of rotatory power.

The taste and odour of camphor are sui generis, or at least are common only to a group of nearly allied substances. Camphor is not altered by exposure to air or light. It burns easily, affording a brilliant smoky flame.

=Chemical Composition=—Camphor, C₁₀H₁₆O, by treatment with various reagents, yields a number of interesting products: thus when repeatedly distilled with chloride of zinc or anhydrous phosphoric acid, it is converted into Cymene or Cymol, C₁₀H₁₄, a body contained in many essential oils, or obtainable therefrom.

Camphor, and also camphor oil, when subjected to powerful oxidizing agents, absorbs oxygen, passing gradually into crystallized Camphoric Acid, C₁₀H₁₆O₄ or C₈H₁₄(COOH)₂, water and carbonic acid being at the same time eliminated. Many essential oils, resins and gum-resins likewise yield these acids when similarly treated.

By means of less energetic oxidizers, camphor may be converted into Oxy-Camphor, C₁₀H₁₆O₂, still retaining its original odour and taste (Wheeler, 1868).

=Commerce=—Two kinds of crude camphor are known in the English market, namely:

1. Formosa or China Camphor, imported in chests lined with lead or tinned iron, and weighing about 1 cwt. each; it is of a light brown, small in grain, and always wet, as the merchants cause water to be poured into the cases before shipment, with a view, it is pretended, of lessening the loss by evaporation. The exports of this camphor from Tamsui in Formosa[1905] were in peculs (one pecul = 13·33 lb. avdp. = 60·479 kilogrammes) as follows:

1870 1871 1872 1875 1876 1877 14,481 9691 10,281 7139 8794 13,178

The shipments of camphor from Takow, the other open port of Formosa, are of insignificant amount. Planks of camphor wood are now exported in some quantity from Tamsui.

2. Japan Camphor is lighter in colour and occasionally of a pinkish tint; it is also in larger grains. It arrives in double tubs (one within the other) without metal lining, and hence is drier than the previous sort; the tubs hold about 1 cwt. It fetches a somewhat higher price than the Formosa camphor.

[1904] Pharm. Journ. 18 April 1874. 830.

[1905] Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1872, part. 2, p. 124.

Hiogo and Osaka exported in 1871, 7089 peculs (945,200 lb.), and Nagasaki 745 peculs (99,333 lb.), the total value being 116,718 dollars.[1906] In 1877 the value of camphor exported from Japan was stated to be equal to 240,000 dollars. The imports of Unrefined Camphor into the United Kingdom amounted in 1870 to 12,368 cwt. (1,385,216 lb.); of Refined Camphor in the same year to 2361 cwt.[1907]

Camphor is largely consumed by the natives of India; the quantity of the crude drug imported into Bombay in the year 1872-73 was 3801 cwt.[1908]

=Uses=—Camphor has stimulant properties and is frequently used in medicine both internally and externally. It is largely consumed in India.

Other kinds of Camphor; Camphor Oils.

Camphor, as stated above at page 512, was the name originally applied to the product of Dryobalanops; it was then also given to that of Camphor Laurel, and in 1725 Caspar Neumann, of Berlin, first pointed out that many essential oils afford crystals (“stearoptenes” of later chemists), for which he proposed the general name of camphor. Many of them are agreeing with the formula C₁₀H₁₆O, and there are also numerous liquids of the same composition. It would appear, however, that no stearoptene of any other plant is absolutely identical with common camphor; Lallemand’s statement (see p. 479), that oil of spike affords the latter, requires further examination.

Many other liquid and solid constituents of essential oils, or substances afforded by treating them with alcoholic potash, answer to the formula C₁₀H₁₇(OH). Among them we may point out the two following: they are the only substances of the class of “camphors,” besides common camphor, which are of some practical importance.

Barus Camphor, Borneo Camphor, Malayan Camphor, Dryobalanops Camphor—This, as already explained, is the substance to which the earliest notices of camphor refer. The tree which affords it is Dryobalanops aromatica Gärtn. (D. Camphora Colebrooke), of the order Dipterocarpeæ, one of the most majestic objects of the vegetable kingdom.[1909] The trunk is very tall, round, and straight, furnished near the base with huge buttresses; it rises 100 to 150 feet without a branch, then producing a dense crown of shining foliage, 50 to 70 feet in diameter, on which are scattered beautiful white flowers of delicious fragrance. The tree is indigenous to the Dutch Residencies on the north-west coast of Sumatra, between 0° and 3° N. lat., from Ayer Bangis to Barus and Singkel, and to the northern part of Borneo, and the small British island of Labuan.

[1906] Commercial Reports from H. M. Consuls in Japan, No. 1, 1872.—The returns for Hiogo and Osaka are upon the authority of the Chamber of Commerce.

[1907] Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom for 1870. p. 61—no later returns accessible.

[1908] Statement of the Trade and Navigation of Bombay for 1872-73. ii. 27.

[1909] For a full account and figure of it, see W. H. de Vriese’s excellent Mémoire sur le Camphrier de Sumatra et de Bornéo, Leide, 1857. 23 p. 4°. and 2 plates.

The camphor is obtained from the trunk, in longitudinal fissures of which it is found in a solid crystalline state, and extracted by laboriously splitting the wood. It can only be got by the destruction of the entire tree;—in fact, many trees afford none, so that to avoid the toil of useless felling, it is now customary to try them by cutting a hole in the side of the trunk, but the observation so made is often fallacious. Spenser St. John, British Consul in Borneo, was told that trees in a state of decay often contain the finest camphor.[1910] The camphor when collected is carefully picked over, washed and cleaned, and then separated into three qualities, the best being formed of the largest and purest crystals, while the lowest is greyish and pulverulent.

Dryobalanops attaining more than 150 feet in height, the quantity of camphor which it yields must necessarily be greatly variable. The statements are from about 3 to 11 lb.

A good proportion of the small quantity produced is consumed in the funeral rites of the Batta princes, whose families are often ruined by the lavish expense of providing the camphor and buffaloes which the custom of their obsequies requires. The camphor which is exported is eagerly bought for the China market, but some is also sent to Japan, Laos, Cochin China, Cambodia, and Siam.

The quantity annually shipped from Borneo was reckoned by Motley in 1851 to be about 7 peculs (933 lbs.). The export from Sumatra was estimated by De Vriese at 10 to 15 quintals per annum.[1911] The quantity imported into Canton in 1872 was returned as 23⁷/₁₀ peculs (3,159 lb.), value 42,326 taels, equivalent to about 80_s._ per lb.[1912] In the Annual Statement of the Trade of Bombay for the year 1872-3, 2 cwt. of Malayan Camphor is stated to have been imported; it was valued at 9,141 Rs. (£914). In the “Indian tariff,” 1875, the duty is fixed per cwt. at 40 rupees for crude camphor, 65 rupees for refined camphor, and 80 rupees per pound for Baros camphor (“Bhemsaini camphor”). The price in Borneo in 1851 of camphor of fine quality was 30 dollars per catty, or about 95_s._ per lb.: consequently the drug never finds its way into European commerce.

[1910] Life in the Forests of the Far East, ii. (1862) 272.

[1911] In Milburn’s time (Oriental Commerce, ii. 1813. 308), Sumatra was reckoned to export 50 peculs, and Borneo 30 peculs a year. Rondot’s statement (see Cassia Buds) that China imports of Barus camphor about 800 peculs annually is plainly erroneous.

[1912] Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China for 1872, p. 30.

Borneo Camphor, also termed by chemists Borneol or Camphyl Alcohol, is somewhat harder than common camphor, also a little heavier so that it sinks in water. It is less volatile, and does not crystallize on the interior of the bottle in which it is kept; and it requires for fusion a higher temperature, namely 198° C. It has a somewhat different odour, resembling that of common camphor with the addition of patchouli or ambergris. The composition of borneol is represented by the formula C₁₀H₁₇(OH). It may be converted by the action of nitric acid into common camphor, which it nearly resembles in most of its physical properties. Conversely, borneol may also be prepared from common camphor. By continued oxydation borneol yields camphoric acid.

Camphor Oil of Borneo—Besides camphor, the Dryobalanops furnishes another product, a liquid termed Camphor Oil, which must not be confounded with the camphor oil that drains out of crude laurel camphor. This Bornean or Sumatran Camphor Oil is obtained by tapping the trees, or in felling them (see also p. 229). In the latter way, Motley in cutting down a tree in Labuan in May, 1851, pierced a reservoir in the trunk from which about five gallons of camphor oil were obtained, though much could not be caught.[1913] The liquid was a volatile oil holding in solution a resin, which after a few days’ exposure to the air, was left in a syrupy state. This camphor oil, which is termed Borneene, is isomeric with oil of turpentine, C₁₀H₁₆, yet in the crude state holding in solution borneol and resin. By fractional distillation, it may be separated into two portions, the one more volatile than the other but not differing in composition.

Camphor Oil of Formosa, which has been already referred to as draining out of the crude camphor of Cinnamomum Camphora, is a brown liquid holding in solution an abundance of common camphor, which it speedily deposits in crystals when the temperature is slightly reduced. From Borneo Camphor Oil it may be distinguished by its odour of sassafras. We find no optical difference in the rotatory power of the oils; both are dextrogyre to the same extent, which is still the case if the camphor from the lauraceous camphor oil is separated by cooling. Borneo camphor oil, for a sample of which we are indebted to Prof. de Vriese, deposits no camphor even when kept at -15° C.

Ngai Camphor, Blumea Camphor—It has been known for many years that the Chinese are in the habit of using a third variety of camphor, having a pecuniary value intermediate between that of common camphor and of Borneo camphor. This substance is manufactured at Canton and in the island of Hainan, the plant from which it is obtained being Blumea balsamifera DC., a tall herbaceous Composita, of the tribe Inuloideæ, called in Chinese Ngai, abundant in Tropical Eastern Asia.

The drug has been supplied to us[1914] in two forms,—crude and pure,—the first being in crystalline grains of a dirty white, contaminated with vegetable remains; the second in colourless crystals as much as an inch in length. By sublimation the substance may be obtained in distinct, brilliant crystals, agreeing precisely with those of Borneo camphor, which they also resemble in odour and hardness, as well as in being a little heavier than water and not so volatile as common camphor.

The chemical examination of Ngai camphor, performed by Plowman,[1915] under the direction of Prof. Attfield, has proved that it has the composition C₁₀H₁₈O, like Borneo camphor. But the two substances differ in optical properties,[1916] an alcoholic solution of Ngai camphor being levogyre in about the same degree that one of Borneo camphor is dextrogyre. By boiling nitric acid, Borneo camphor is transformed into common (dextrogyre) camphor, whereas Ngai camphor affords a similar yet levogyre camphor, in all probability identical with the stearoptene of Chrysanthemum Parthenium Pers.

As Ngai camphor is about ten times the price of Formosa camphor, it never finds its way to Europe as an article of trade. In China it is consumed partly in medicine and partly in perfuming the fine kinds of Chinese ink. The export of this camphor by sea from Canton is valued at about £3,000 a year; it is also exported from Kiung-chow, in the island of Hainan.

[1913] Ibn Khurdádbah in the 9th century mentions it as being obtained in this way.

[1914] Through the courtesy of Mr. F. H. Ewer, of the Imperial Maritime Customs, Canton.—Hanbury, Science Papers, 189. 393.

[1915] Pharm. Journ. March 7, 1874. 710.

[1916] Flückiger in Pharm. Journ. April 18, 1874. 829.

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