part 21

(1877).

[2501] _On the study of Chinese botanical works_, Foochow, 1870. 27.

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

Areca nut, though held in great estimation among Asiatics as a masticatory, and supposed to strengthen the gums, sweeten the breath and improve digestion, has not until recently been regarded as possessing any particular medicinal powers beyond those of a mild astringent.[2502] It has often been administered as a vermifuge to dogs, and in India and China is given with the same intent to the human subject. Some successful trials recently made of it for the expulsion of tapeworm have led to it being included in the _Additions to the British Pharmacopœia of 1867_, published in 1874.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thus, Ceylon exported of areca nuts in the year 1871, 66,543 cwt., value £62,593; in 1872, 71,715 cwt.,—the latter quantity entirely to India; in 1875 of the total export of 94,567 cwt. 86,446 were shipped to India.[2503]

The Madras Presidency largely trades in the same commodity. In the year 1872-1873 there were shipped thence to Bombay 43,958 cwt., besides about two millions of the entire fruit.[2504] An extensive traffic in areca nuts is carried on at Singapore and especially in Sumatra.

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

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

[2503] Ceylon Blue Books.

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

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

SANGUIS DRACONIS.

_Resina Draconis_; _Dragons Blood_; F. _Sang-dragon_; G. _Drachenblut_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Calamus Draco_[2505] Willd. (_Dæmonorhops Draco_ Mart.)—This is one of the Rotang or Rattan Palms, remarkable for their very long flexible stems, which climb among the branches of trees by means of spines on the leafstalk. The species under notice, called in Malay _Rotang Jernang_, grows in swampy forests of the Residency of Palembang and in the territory of Jambi, in Eastern Sumatra, and in Southern Borneo, which regions furnish the dragon’s blood of commerce. It is said to occur also in Penang and in various islands of the Sunda chain.

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

Dragon’s blood is, we believe, not named by any of the earlier voyagers to the India islands. Ibn Batuta, who visited both Java and Sumatra between A.D. 1325 and 1349, and notices their producing benzoin (see p. 404), cloves, camphor, and aloes-wood, is silent about dragon’s blood. Barbosa, whose intelligent narrative (A.D. 1514) of the East Indies[2506] is full of reference to the trade and productions of the different localities he visited, states that aloes and _dragon’s blood_ are produced in Socotra, but makes no mention of the latter commodity as found at Malacca, Java, Sumatra, or Borneo.

The fact we wish to prove is corroborated by the accounts of early commercial intercourse between the Chinese and Arabs recently published by Bretschneider.[2507] From the 10th to the 15th century there was carried on between these nations a trade, the objects of which were not only the productions of the Arabian Gulf and countries further north, but also those of the Indian Archipelago. One of the islands with which the Arabs and Persians carried on a great commerce was Sumatra, whence they obtained the precious camphor so much valued by the Chinese, but not, so far as it appears, the resin dragon’s blood. As to the productions brought from Arabia they are enumerated as Ostriches, Olibanum, Liquid Storax, Myrrh, and _Dragon’s Blood_, besides a few other articles not yet determined. It is worthy of remark that the Chinese are still the principal consumers of dragon’s blood, though like the rest of mankind they have to content themselves with the plentiful drug of Sumatra and Borneo, instead of the more ancient sort produced in Socotra.

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

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

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

The first clear account of the production of the resin in India is that given by Rumphius, who in his _Herbarium Amboinense_[2508] describes the process by which it is collected at Palembang.

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

The resin, which is naturally friable, is collected by gathering the fruits, and shaking or beating them in a sack, by which process it is soon separated. It is then sifted to remove from it scales and other portions of the fruit. By exposure to the heat of the sun or in a covered vessel to that of boiling water, the resin is so far softened that it can be moulded into sticks or balls, which are forthwith wrapped in a piece of palm leaf. It is thus that the best dragon’s blood, or _jernang_, is obtained. An inferior quality is got by boiling the pounded fruits in water, and making the resin into a mass, frequently with the addition of other substances by way of adulteration. The foregoing is the account of the manufacture of the drug given by Blume.[2509]

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

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

=Description=—Dragon’s Blood is found in commerce chiefly in two forms, known respectively as _Reed_ and _Lump_.

1. _Reed Dragon’s Blood_ (Dragon’s Blood in sticks, _Sanguis draconis in baculis_). Some of fine quality purchased in London in 1842 is in sticks 13 to 14 inches in length, and ¾ to 1 inch in diameter, neatly wrapped in palm leaf, secured by 8 or 9 transverse bands of some flexible grass. The average weight of each stick, including the enveloping leaf, is five ounces. The resin has evidently been wrapt up while soft, as the sticks are furrowed longitudinally by pressure of the surrounding leaf. The smooth surface is of an intense blackish-brown; when seen in thin splinters the resin appears transparent, and of a pure and brilliant crimson. The fractured surface looks resinous and rough, is a little porous, and contains numerous

## particles of the scales of the fruit. Rubbed on paper it leaves a red

mark of not very splendid tint. Heated with alcohol it left 20 per cent. of pulverulent residue consisting chiefly of vegetable matter. Sticks of smaller size are more common.

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

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

=Chemical Composition=—Dragon’s blood is a peculiar resin, which according to Johnston[2510] answers to the formula C₂₀H₂₀O₄. By heating it and condensing the vapour an aqueous acid liquid is obtained, together with a heavy oily portion of a pungent burning taste and crystals of benzoic acid. The composition of these products has not yet been thoroughly ascertained, but the presence of acetone, _Toluol_, C₆H₅(CH₃), _Dracyl_ of Glénard and Boudault (1844), and _Styrol_, C₈H₈ (_Draconyl_), has been pointed out,[2511] the latter perhaps due to the existence in the drug of metastyrol (p. 274), as suggested by Kovalewsky.[2512] Both these hydrocarbons are _lighter_ than water; yet we find that the above oily portion yielded by dry distillation sinks in water, a circumstance possibly occasioned by the presence of benzoic alcohol, C₆H₅(CH₂OH).

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

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

=Commerce=—Dragon’s blood is shipped from Singapore and Batavia. Large quantities are annually exported from Banjarmasin in Borneo to these places and to China.[2513]

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

=Adulteration=—Dragon’s blood varies exceedingly in quality,[2514] of which the principal criterion regarded by the dealers is _colour_. Some of the inferior sorts make only a dull brick-red mark when rubbed on paper, and have an earthy-looking fracture. The sticks moreover do not take the impression of the enveloping leaf as when they are more purely resinous. A sample of inferior Reed Dragon’s Blood afforded us 40 per cent. of matter, insoluble in spirit of wine.

[2510] _Phil. Trans._ 1839. 134; 1840. 384.

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

[2512] Gmelin, _Chemistry_, xvii. 388; also _Annalen der Chemie_, cxx. (1861) 68.

[2513] Low, _Sarawak, its inhabitants and productions_, 1848. 43.

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

Other sorts of Dragon’s Blood.

_Dragon’s Blood of Socotra_—We have already stated (p. 672) that the _Cinnabar_ mentioned by Dioscorides was brought from Africa. That the term really designated dragon’s blood seems evident from the fact that the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea,[2515] written _circa_ A.D. 54-68, names it (Κιννάβαρι) as a production of the island of Dioscorida, the ancient name of Socotra.

The Arabians, as Abu Hanifa and Ibn Baytar,[2516] describe dragon’s blood as brought from Socotra, giving to the drug the very name by which it is known to the Arabs at the present day, namely, _Dam-ul-akh-wain_. Barbosa (1514) as well as Giovanni di Barros[2517] mention it as a production of the island; and in our own times it has been noticed by Wellstead,[2518] Vaughan,[2519] and A. von Kremer.[2520] It is now but little collected. Vaughan states, as well as Von Wrede, that the tree is found in Hadramaut and on the east coast of Africa. The latter statement is also made in letters (1877, 1878), with which we were favoured by Captain Hunter of Aden and Hildebrandt of Berlin (see pages 140 and 141), by the latter of whom we were presented with a photographic sketch of the tree growing in the Somali country, at elevations of from 2500 to 5500 feet, and called there Moli. It is _Dracæna schizantha_ Baker,[2521] a tree attaining 8 metres in height. The resin has an acidulous taste, and is, according to Hildebrandt, not exported, but occasionally eaten by the Somalis. The tree from which dragon’s blood is collected in Socotra is, according to Capt. Hunter, _Dracæna Ombet_ Kotschy.

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

_Dragon’s Blood of the Canary Islands_—This substance is afforded by _Dracæna Draco_ L., a liliaceous tree[2522] resembling a _Yucca_, of which the famous specimen at Orotava in Teneriffe has often been described on account of its gigantic dimensions and venerable age.[2523]

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

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

[2517] _L’Asia_, sec. deca. Venet. 1561. p. 10. a.

[2518] _Travels in Arabia_, Lond. 1838. ii. 449.

[2519] _Pharm. Journ._ xii. (1853) 385.

[2520] _Aegypten_, Leipzig, 1863.

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

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

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

On the exploration of Madeira and Porto Santo in the 15th century, dragon’s blood was one of the valued productions collected by the voyagers, and is named as such by Alvise da ca da Mosto in 1454.[2524] It is also mentioned by the German physician Hieronymus Münzer, who visited Lisbon about 1494.[2525]

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

The name _Dragon’s Blood_ has also been applied to an exudation obtained from the West Indian _Pterocarpus Draco_ L., and to that of _Croton Draco_ Schlecht.; but the latter appears to be of the nature of kino, and neither substance is met with in European commerce.

AROIDEÆ.

RHIZOMA CALAMI AROMATICI.

_Radix Calami aromatici_, _Radix Acori_; _Sweet Flag Root_; F. _Acore odorant ou vrai_, _Roseau aromatique_; G. _Kalmus_.

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

Regarding the introduction of _Acorus Calamus_ into Western Europe, it is believed in Poland to have been introduced there in the 13th century by the Tartars, yet it seems not to have attracted then any attention. The well-informed botanist, Bock (Tragus), mentioning the use of the preserved rhizome by wealthy persons, states[2526] that he had never seen the plant growing in Germany. Clusius[2527] relates that he first received a living plant in 1574, sent from the lake Apollonia near Brussa in Asia Minor. Camerarius,[2528] writing in 1588, speaks of it as introduced some years previously, and then plentiful in Germany, which seems to show a rapid propagation. Gerarde at the close of the century looked upon _Acorus_ as an Eastern plant, which he says is grown in many English gardens, and might hence be fitly called the “_Sweet Garden Flag_.” Berlu,[2529] in 1724, observes of the root that—“_it is brought in quantities from Germany_:” hence we may infer that it was not then collected in England, as we know it was at a later period.[2530]

[2524] Ramusio, _Raccolta delle Navigationi et Viaggi_, Venet. i. 97.

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

[2526] _Teutsche Speiskammer_, Strassburg, 1550. ciiii.

[2527] _Rariorum Stirpium Historia_, Antv. 1576. 520.

[2528] _Hortus medicus et philosophicus_, Francof. 1588. 5.

[2529] _Treasury of Drugs_, ed. ii. 1724. 115.

[2530] See also Trimen in _Journ. of Botany_, ix. (1871) 163.

=History=—Sweet Flag root has been from the earliest times a favourite medicine of the natives of India, in which country it is sold in every bazaar. Ainslie[2531] asserts that it is reckoned so valuable in the bowel complaints of children that there is a penalty incurred by any druggist who will not open his door in the middle of the night to sell it, if demanded!

The descriptions of _Acoron_, a plant of Colchis, Galatia, Pontus, and Crete, given by Dioscorides and Pliny, certainly refer to this drug. We think that the Κάλαμος ἀρωματικός of Dioscorides, which he states to grow in India, is the same, though Royle regards it as an _Andropogon_. The Κάλαμος of Theophrastus and the _Calamus_ of the English Bible[2532] are considered by some authors to refer to the Sweet Flag.

Celsus in the first century mentioned _Calamus Alexandrinus_, the drug being probably then brought from India by way of the Red Sea. We know by the testimony of Amatus Lusitanus[2533] that in the 16th century it used to be so imported into Venice. Rheede,[2534] moreover, described and figured _Acorus Calamus_ as an Indian plant under the name _Vacha_, which it still bears on the Malabar Coast. But in the pharmaceutical tariff of the German town of Halberstadt of the year 1697, “_Calamus aromaticus verus, Indianischer Calmus_” and “_Calamus aromaticus nostras_,” _common Calmus_, are quoted at exactly the same price,[2535] and Murray[2536] states expressly that in his time (1790) Asiatic calamus was still met with in the pharmacies of Continental Europe, but that it had mostly been replaced by the home-grown drug. At the present time the _Calamus aromaticus_ of commerce is European; in all essential characters it agrees with that of India, a package of which is now and then offered in the London drug sales.

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

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

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

[2531] _Mat. Med. of Hindoostan_, Madras, 1813. 54.

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

[2533] _In Diosc. de Mat. Med. Enarrationes_, Argent. 1554. 33.

[2534] _Hortus Malabar_, xi (1692) tab. 48. 49.

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

[2536] _Apparatus Medicaminum_, v. 40.

=Microscopic Structure=—The outermost layer is made up of extended epiblema-cells or of a brown corky tissue, the latter occurring in the parts free from leaf-scars. The prevailing tissue, both of the outer and the central part, consists of uniform nearly globular cells, traversed by numerous vascular bundles, especially at the boundary line (medullary sheath). Besides them, the rootstock like that of many fresh-water plants, exhibits a large number of intercellular holes. These air-holes, or more correctly water-holes, are somewhat longitudinally extended, so as to form a kind of network, imparting a spongy consistence[2537] to the fresh rootstock. At certain places, where the series of cells cross one another, especially in the outer part, there are single cells filled with essential oil,[2538] which may be made very conspicuous by adding to sections dilute potash or perchloride of iron. The other cells are loaded with small starch granules; a little mucilage and tannic matter is met with in the exterior coat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LILIACEÆ.

ALOË.

_Aloes_; F. _Aloès ou Suc d’Aloès_; G. _Aloë_.

=Botanical Origin=—Several species of _Aloë_[2539] furnish a bitter juice which when inspissated forms this drug. These plants are natives of arid, sunny places in Southern and Eastern Africa, whence a few species have been introduced into Northern Africa, Spain,[2540] and the East and West Indies.

The aloes are succulent plants of liliaceous habit with persistent fleshy leaves, usually prickly at the margin, and erect spikes of yellow or red flowers. Many are stemless; others produce stems some feet in height, which are woody and branching. In the remote districts of Namaqua Land and Damara Land in Western South Africa, and in the Transkei Territory and Northern Natal to the eastern, aloes have been discovered which attain 30 to 60 feet in height, with stems as much as 12 feet in circumference.[2541] The following species may be named with more or less of certainty as yielding the drug.[2542]

_Aloë socotrina_ Lam. (_A. vera_ Miller), native of the southern shores of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, Socotra, and Zanzibar (?). It is the source of the _Socotrine_ and _Moka Aloes_. _A. officinalis_ Forsk. and _A. rubescens_ DC. are considered to be varieties of this plant. _A. abyssinica_ Lam. may probably contribute to the aloes shipped from the Red Sea.

_A. vulgaris_ Lam. _A. perfoliata_, var. π. _vera_ Linn., _A. barbadensis_ Mill., a plant of India and of Eastern and Northern Africa, now found also on the shores of Southern Spain, Sicily, Greece, and the Canaries; introduced in the beginning of the 16th century (or earlier) into the West Indies. It affords _Barbados_ and _Curaçao Aloes_. _A. indica_ Royle, a plant of the North-west Provinces of India, common in Indian gardens, appears to be a slight variety of _A. vulgaris_ Lam. _A. litoralis_ König, said to grow in abundance at Cape Comorin, is unknown to us. Dr. Bidie suggests that it is a form of the preceding, stunted by a poor saline soil and exposure to the sea breeze. Both _A. indica_ and _A. litoralis_ are named in the _Pharmacopœia of India_.

_Aloë ferox_ L., and hybrids obtained by crossing it with _A. africana_ Mill. and _A. spicata_ Thunberg, _A. perfoliata_ Linn. (_quoad_ Roxb.) and _A. linguæformis_ are reputed to yield the best _Cape Aloes_.

_A. africana_ Mill. and its varieties, and _A. plicatilis_ Mill. afford an extract which Pappe[2543] says is thought to be less powerful.

[2539] From the Syriac _Alwai_.

[2540] _Aloë arborescens_, _A. purpurascens_, and _A. vulgaris_ may be seen luxuriantly growing in Valencia, Granada, Gibraltar.

[2541] Dyer in _Gardeners’ Chronicle_, May 2, 1874, with figures.

[2542] Good figures of _Aloë africana_, _A. arborescens_, _A. ferox_, _A. purpurascens_, _A. socotrina_, and _A. vulgaris_ will be found in the work _Monographia generis Aloës et Mesembryanthemi_, auctore Jos. Principe de Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck, Bonnae, 1836-1863. fol.

[2543] _Floræ Capensis Medicæ Prodromus_, ed. 2, 1857. 41.

_A. arborescens_ Mill., _A. Commelini_ Willd. and _A. purpurascens_ Haworth are stated to produce a portion of the _Cape Aloes_ of commerce.[2544]

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

=History=—Aloes was known to the Greeks as a production of the island of Socotra as early as the 4th century B.C., if we might credit a remarkable legend thus given in the writings of the Arabian geographer Edrisi.[2545] When Alexander had conquered the king of the Persians and his fleets had vanquished the islands of India, and he had killed Pour, king of the Indies, his master Aristotle recommended him to seek the island that produces _Aloes_. So when he had finished his conquests in India, he returned by way of the Indian Sea into that of Oman, conquered the isles therein, and arrived at last at Socotra, of which he admired the fertility and the climate. And from the advice which Aristotle gave him he determined to remove the original inhabitants and to put Greeks in their place, enjoining the latter to preserve carefully the plant yielding aloes, on account of its utility, and because that without it certain sovereign remedies could not be compounded. He thought also that the trade in and use of this noble drug would be a great advantage for all people. So he took away the original people of the island of Socotra, and established in their stead a colony of Ionians, who remained under his protection and that of his successors, and acquired great riches, until the period when the religion of the Messiah appeared, which religion they embraced. They then became Christians, and so their descendants have remained up to the present time (_circa_ A.D. 1154).

This curious account, which Yule[2546] says is doubtless a fable, but invented to account for facts, is alluded to by the Mahomedan travellers of the 9th century[2547] and in the 10th by Masudi,[2548] who says that in his time aloes was produced only in the island of Socotra, where its manufacture had been _improved_ by Greeks sent thither by Alexander the Great.

Aloes is not mentioned by Theophrastus, but appears to have been well known to Celsus, Dioscorides, Pliny and the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, as well as to the later Greek[2549] and the Arabian physicians. From the notices of it in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books and a reference to it as one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, we may infer that its use was not unknown in Britain as early as the 10th century.[2550]

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

[2545] _Géographie d’Edrisi_, i. (1836) 47.

[2546] _Marco Polo_, ii. 343.

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

[2548] Tome iii. 36.—See Appendix.

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

[2550] See p. 439. note 1.

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

Pires, an apothecary at Cochin, in a letter on Eastern drugs[2551] addressed to Manuel, king of Portugal, in 1516, reports that aloes grows in the island of Çacotora, Aden, Cambaya, Valencia of Arragon, and in other parts,—the most esteemed being that of Çacotora, and next is that of Spain; while the drug of Aden and Cambaya is so bad as to be worthless.

In the early part of the 17th century there was a direct trade in aloes between England and Socotra; and in the records of the East India Company there are many notices of the drug being bought of the “King of Socotra.” Frequently the king’s whole stock of aloes is mentioned as having been purchased.[2552]

Wellstead, who travelled in Socotra in 1833,[2553] says that in old times the aloë was far more largely grown there than at present, and that the walls which enclosed the plantations may still be seen. He adds that the produce was a monopoly of the Sultan of the island. At the present day the few productions of Socotra that are exported are carried by the Arab coasting vessels, coming annually from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar, at which place they are transshipped for Indian and other ports. Dr. Kirk, who has resided at Zanzibar from 1866 to 1873, informs us that aloes from Socotra arrives in a very soft state packed in goatskins. From these it is transferred to wooden boxes, in which it concretes, and is shipped to Europe and America. To avoid loss the skins have to be washed; and the aloetic liquor evaporated.

Ligon,[2554] who visited the island of Barbados in 1647-50, that is about twenty years after the arrival of the first settlers, speaks of the aloë as if it were indigenous, mentioning also the useful plants which had been introduced. At that period the settlers knew how to prepare the juice for medicinal use, but had not begun to export it. Barbados aloes was in the drug warehouses of London in 1693.[2555]

The manufacture of aloes in the Cape Colony of South Africa was observed by Thunberg in 1773 on the farm of a boer named Peter de Wett, who was the first to prepare the drug in that country.[2556] Cape Aloes is enumerated in the stock of a London druggist in 1780, its cost being set down as £10 per cwt. (1_s._ 9½_d._ per lb.).

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

_Lignum Aloes_—It is important to bear in mind that the word _Aloes_ or _Lign Aloës_, in Latin _Lignum Aloës_, is used in the Bible and in many ancient writings to designate a substance totally distinct from the modern _Aloes_, namely the resinous wood of _Aquilaria Agallocha_ Roxburgh, a large tree[2557] of the order Thymeleaceæ, growing in the Malayan Peninsula. Its wood constituted a drug[2558] which was, down to the beginning of the present century, generally valued for use as incense, but now esteemed only in the East.

[2551] See Appendix.

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

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

[2554] _History of Barbadoes_, Lond. 1673. 98.

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

[2556] Thunberg, _Travels in Asia, Europe and Africa_, ii. 49. 50.

[2557] Fig. in Royle, _Illustr. of the Himalayan Bot. etc._ (1839) tab. 36. See also _Dictionnaire de Botanique_.

[2558] Hanbury, _Science Papers_, 1876. 263; also Flückiger, _Die Frankfurter Liste_, Halle, 1873. 37. (_Archiv der Pharm._ cci. 511).—For full historical information see Heyd, _Levantehandel_, ii. (1879), 559.

=Structure of the Leaf=—The stout fleshy leaves of an aloë have a strong cuticle and thick-walled epidermis. Their interior substance is formed of very loose, large-celled, colourless pulp, traversed by vascular bundles, which, on transverse section, are seen to be accompanied by a group of large thin-walled cells[2559] containing the bitter juice which constitutes the drug under notice. These cells, on a longitudinal section, are seen to be considerably elongated, adjoining a single row of smaller, prismatic, truncated cells,[2560] by which the former are separated from the cortical layer. The prismatic cells contain a yellow juice, apparently different from that which yields aloes. The cortical tissue is filled with granules of chlorophyll, and exhibits between the cells groups of needles of calcium oxalate. Similar crystals are also found sparingly in the pulp.

The transparent pulp-tissue[2561] is rich in mucilage, which after dilution with water is precipitated by neutral acetate of lead, but is not coagulated by boiling.

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

=Cultivation and Manufacture=—In Barbados,[2562] where _Aloë vulgaris_ is systematically cultivated for the production of the drug, the plants are set 6 inches apart, in rows which are 1 to 1½ foot asunder, the ground having been carefully prepared and manured. They are kept free from grass and weeds, but yams or pulse are frequently grown between them. The plants are always dwarf, never in the least degree arborescent; almost all of those above a year old bear flowers, which being bright yellow, have a beautiful effect. The leaves are 1-2 feet long; they are cut annually, but this does not destroy the plant, which, under good cultivation, lasts for several years.

[2559] The cells lettered _e_ in Berg’s figure C, plate iv. _f._ of his “_Offizinelle Gewächse_.”

[2560] The cells _d_, in Berg’s figure.

[2561] This central pulpy tissue is _quite tasteless_, and is actually used as food in times of scarcity in some parts of India.—Stewart, _Punjab Plants_, 1869. 232.

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

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

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

The drug is not always readily saleable in the island, but is usually bought up by speculators who keep it till there is a demand for it in England. The cultivators are small proprietors, but little capable as to mind or means of making experiments to improve the manufacture of the drug. It is said, however, that occasionally a little aloes of very superior kind is made for some special purpose by exposing the juice in a shallow vessel to solar heat till completely dry. But such a drug is stated to cost too much time and trouble to be profitable.[2563] The manufacture of aloes in the Dutch West Indian island of Curaçao is conducted in the same manner.[2564]

The manufacture of aloes in the Cape Colony has been thus described to us in a letter[2565] from Mr. Peter MacOwan of Gill College, Somerset East:—The operator scratches a shallow dish-shaped hollow in the dry ground, spreads therein a goatskin, and then proceeds to arrange around the margin a radial series of aloë leaves, the cut ends projecting inwards. Upon this, a second series is piled, and then a third—care being taken that the ends of each series overhang sufficiently, to drop clear into the central hollow. When these preparations have been made, the operator either “loafs about” after wild honey, or, more likely, lies down to sleep. The skin being nearly filled, four skewers run in and out at the edge square-fashion, give the means of lifting this primitive saucer from the ground, and emptying its contents into a cast-iron pot. The liquid is then boiled, an operation conducted with the utmost carelessness. Fresh juice is added to that which has nearly acquired the finished consistence; the fire is slackened or urged just as it happens, and the boiling is often interrupted for many hours, if neglect be more convenient than attention. In fact, the process is thoroughly barbarous, conducted without industry or reflection; it is mostly carried on by Bastaards and Hottentots, but not by Kaffirs. “The only aloë I have seen used,” says Mr. MacOwan, “is the very large one with di-or tri-chotomous inflorescence,—_A. ferox_, I believe.” Backhouse[2566] also names “_Aloë ferox?_” as the species he saw used near Port Elizabeth in 1838.

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

[2564] Oudemans, _Handleiding tot de Pharmacognosie_, 1865. 316.

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

[2566] _Visit to Mauritius and South Africa_, 1844. 157, also 121.

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

Nothing is known of the manufacture of the so-called _Socotrine_ or _Zanzibar Aloes_, or even with certainty in what precise localities it is carried on.

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

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

The _Hepatic Aloes_ of the old writers[2567] was doubtless this rather opaque form of Socotrine Aloes; but the term has come to be used somewhat vaguely for any sort of liver-coloured aloes, and appears to us unworthy to be retained. Much of the opaque, so-called _Hepatic Aloes_ does not however owe its opacity to crystals, but to a feculent matter the nature of which is doubtful.

The odour of aloes is a character which is much depended on by dealers for distinguishing the different varieties, but it can only be appreciated by experience, and certainly cannot be described.[2568]

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

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

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

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

1. _Socotrine Aloes_—also called _Bombay_, _East Indian_, or _Zanzibar Aloes_, and when opaque and liver-coloured, Hepatic Aloes. It is imported in kegs and tin-lined boxes from Bombay, whither it has been carried by the Arab traders from the African coast, the Red Sea ports, or by way of Zanzibar, from Socotra. When of fine quality, it is of a dark reddish-brown, of a peculiar, rather agreeable odour, comparable to myrrh or saffron. In thin fragments, it is seen to be of an orange-brown; its powder is of a tawny reddish-brown. When moistened with spirit of wine, and examined in a thin stratum under the microscope, good Socotrine Aloes is seen to contain an abundance of crystals. As imported, it is usually soft, at least in the interior of the mass, but it speedily dries and hardens by keeping.[2569] It is occasionally imported in a completely fluid state (_Liquid Socotrine Aloes_, _Aloë Juice_), and is not unfrequently somewhat sour and deteriorated.

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

The quantity of aloes imported into Bombay in the year 1871-72 was 892 cwt., of which 736 cwt. are reported as shipped from the Red Sea ports and Aden.[2570]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The drug is manufactured in the upper districts of Natal, between Pietermaritzburg and the Quathlamba mountains, especially in the Umvoti and Mooi River Counties, at an elevation of 2000 to 4000 feet above the sea. The plant used is a large aloë which has not yet been botanically identified. The people who make the drug are British and Dutch settlers, employing Kaffir labourers. The process is not very different from that followed in making Cape aloes, but is conducted with more intelligence. The leaves are cut obliquely into slices, and allowed to exude their juice in the hot sunshine. The juice is then boiled down in iron pots, some care being taken to prevent burning, by stirring the liquid as it becomes thick. The drug while still hot, is poured into wooden cases, in which it is shipped to Europe.[2571] The exports from the colony have been as follows:—[2572]

1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 none 38 cwt. 646 cwt. 372 cwt. 501 cwt.

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

Pure aloes dissolves easily in spirit of wine with the exception of a few flocculi; it is insoluble in chloroform and bisulphide of carbon, as well as in the so-called petroleum ether, the most volatile portion of American petroleum. The sp. gr. of fine transparent fragments of aloes, dried at 100° C., and weighed in the last named fluid at 16° C., was found by one of us (F.) to be 1·364; showing that aloes is much more ponderous than most of the resins, which seldom have a higher sp. gr. than 1·00 to 1·10. In water aloes dissolves completely only when heated. On cooling, the aqueous solution, whether concentrated or dilute, becomes turbid by the separation of resinous drops, which unite into a brown mass,—the so-called _Resin of Aloes_.[2573] The clear solution, after separation of this substance, has a slightly acid reaction; it is coloured dark brown by alkalis, black by ferric chloride, and is precipitated yellowish-grey by neutral lead acetate. Cold water dissolves about half its weight of aloes, forming an acid liquid which exhibits similar reactions. The solution of aloes in potash or ammonia is precipitated by acids, but not by water.

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

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

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

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

Barbaloïn was discovered by T. and H. Smith of Edinburgh in 1851,[2574] and was described (1851) by Stenhouse. From good qualities of the drug it can be obtained, according to Tilden,[2575] as a crystalline mass, to the extent of 20 to 25 per cent., but in others it appears to occur

## partly amorphous or in a chemically altered state. Barbaloïn is a

neutral substance, crystallizing in tufts of small yellow prisms. These crystals represent _hydrated_ aloïn, and part with one molecule of water (=2·69 per cent.) by desiccation _in vacuo_, or by the prolonged heat of a water-bath. Barbaloïn, C₃₄H₃₆O₁₄ + H₂O, dissolves sparingly in water or alcohol but very freely if either liquid be even slightly warmed; it is insoluble in ether.

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

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

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

At 15·5° C., 60 parts of alcohol, 35 of methylic alcohol,[2576] 50 of acetic ether, 1236 of ether, and 230 of absolute alcohol, dissolve respectively one part of nataloïn. It is scarcely more soluble in warm than in cold spirit of wine, so that to obtain crystals it is best to allow the solution to evaporate spontaneously. Water hot or cold dissolves it very sparingly. Nataloïn gives off no water when exposed over oil of vitriol, or to a temperature of 100° C. By the

## action of nitric acid, it affords both oxalic and picric acids, but no

chrysammic acid. It appears not to combine with chlorine or bromine, and we have failed in obtaining from it any such body as bromaloïn.

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

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

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

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

Histed was the first to assert that the crystalline matter of Socotrine or Zanzibar aloes is a peculiar substance, according neither with barbaloïn nor with nataloïn. This observation was fully corroborated by our own experiments,[2577] made chiefly on the Zanzibar aloes just described, and we shall call the substance thus discovered _Socaloïn_. In this drug, the crystals are prisms of comparatively large size, such as we have never observed in Natal aloes. They cannot be so easily isolated as nataloïn, since they are nearly as soluble as the amorphous matter surrounding them. Histed recommends treating the powdered crude drug with a little alcohol, sp. gr. 0·960, and strongly pressing the pasty mass between several thicknesses of calico; then dissolving the yellow crystalline cake in warm weak alcohol, and collecting the crystals which are formed by cooling and repose.

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

The three aloïns, _Barbaloïn_, _Nataloïn_, and _Socaloïn_, are easily distinguished by the following beautiful reaction first noticed by Histed:—a drop of nitric acid on a porcelain slab gives with a few

## particles of barbaloïn or nataloïn, a vivid crimson,[2578] but produces

little effect with socaloïn. To distinguish barbaloïn from nataloïn, test each by adding a minute quantity to a drop or two of oil of vitriol, then allowing the _vapour_ from a rod touched with nitric acid to pass over the surface. Barbaloïn (and socaloïn) will undergo no change, but nataloïn will assume a fine blue.[2579]

[2577] Flückiger, _Crystalline Principles in Aloes_,—_Pharm. Journ._ September 2, 1871. 195.

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

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

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

Barbaloïn C₁₇H₂₀O₇ Nataloïn C₁₆H₁₈O₇ Socaloïn C₁₅H₁₆O₇

They derive in all probability from anthracene, C₁₄H₁₀.

The portion of aloes insoluble in cold water was formerly distinguished as _Resin of Aloes_, from the soluble portion which was called _Bitter of aloes_ or _Aloëtin_. From the labours of Kossmann (1863), these portions appear to have nearly the same composition. The soluble portions treated with dilute sulphuric acid, is said to yield _Aloëresic_ and _Aloëretic Acids_, both crystallizable, besides the indifferent substance _Aloëretin_. These observations have not to our knowledge been confirmed.

It has been shown by Tilden and Rammell[2580] that the _Resin of Aloes_ may by prolonged treatment with boiling water be separated into two bodies, which they distinguish as _Soluble Resin A._ and _Insoluble Resin B._ With the first it is possible to form a brominated compound, which though non-crystalline is apparently of definite composition. In the view of these chemists the _Resin A._ is a kind of anhydride of barbaloïn—Barbaloïn, 2(C₃₄H₃₆O₁₄) less H₂O = Aloe Resin A., C₆₈H₇₀O₂₇. The resin boiled with nitric acid yields a large amount of chrysammic acid, together with picric and oxalic acids, and carbonic anhydride. _Insoluble Resin B._ was found to have nearly the same composition as _Resin A._

[2580] _Pharm. Journ._ Sept. 21, 1872. 235.

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

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

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

{(CH₃)₂ C₇H₃ {, with acetone and hydrocarbons. {OH

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

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

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

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

The commercial value of the varieties of aloes is very different. In 1874, _Barbados Aloes_ was quoted in price-currents at £3 5_s._ to £9 10_s._ per cwt.; _Socotrine_ at £5 to £13; while _Cape Aloes_ was offered at £1 10_s._ to £2. In England, the first two alone are allowed for pharmaceutical preparations. Even the _Veterinary Pharmacopœia_[2581] names only _Aloë Barbadensis_. Cape Aloes is esteemed on the Continent, and chiefly consumed there.

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

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

BULBUS SCILLÆ.

_Radix Scillæ_; _Squill_; F. _Bulbe ou squames de Scille_, _Ognon marin_; G. _Meerzwiebel_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Urginea maritima_ Baker[2582] (_Scilla maritima_ L., _Urginea Scilla_ Steinheil). It is found generally in the regions bordering the Mediterranean, as in Southern France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, North Africa and the Mediterranean islands. In Sicily, where it grows most abundantly, Urginea ascends to elevations of 3000 feet. It is also very common throughout the South of Spain, where it is by no means confined to the coast; it occurs also in Portugal. In the Riviera of Genoa the peasants like to see it growing under the fig trees.

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

=History=—Squill is one of the most ancient of medicines. Epimenides, a Greek who lived in the 30th Olympiad, is said to have made much use of it, from which circumstance it came to be called _Epimenidea_[2583]. It is also mentioned by Theophrastus, and was probably well known to all the ancient Greek physicians. Pliny was not only acquainted with it, but had noticed its two varieties. Dioscorides describes the method of making vinegar of squills; and a similar preparation, as well as compounds of squill with honey, were administered by the Arabian physicians, and still remain in use. The medical school of Salerno preferred the red variety of the drug, which on the whole is not frequently met with in mediæval literature.

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

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

[2583] Haller, _Bibliotheca botanica_, i. 12.

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

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

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

On shaking thin slices of the bulb with water, the crystals are deposited in sufficient quantity to become visible to the naked eye, though their weight is actually very small. Direct estimation of the oxalic acid (by titration with chamæleon solution) gave us only 3·07 per cent. of C₂CaO₄,3H₂O from white squill dried at 100° C., which moreover yielded only 2 to 5 per cent. of ash. It is these extremely sharp brittle crystals which occasion the itching and redness, and sometimes even vesication, which result from rubbing a slice of fresh squill on the skin. These effects, which have long been known, were attributed to a volatile acrid principle, until their true cause was recognized by Schroff.[2584]

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

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

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

An alkaline solution of tartrate of copper is not acted upon by sinistrin. It is transformed into sugar by boiling it for half an hour with water containing 1 per cent. of sulphuric acid. The sugar thus produced is stated by Schmiedeberg to consist of lævulose[2585] and another sugar, which in all probability, when perfectly pure, must prove devoid of rotatory power.

The name sinistrin[2586] has also been applied to a mucilaginous matter extracted from barley (see Hordeum decorticatum); it remains to be proved that the latter is identical with the sinistrin of squill.

We have obtained a considerable amount of an uncrystallizable levogyre sugar by exhausting squill with dilute alcohol.[2587] Alcohol added to an aqueous infusion of squill causes the separation of the mucilage, together with albuminoid matter. If the alcohol is evaporated and a solution of tannic acid is added, the latter will combine with the _bitter principle_ of squill, which has not yet been isolated, although several chemists have devoted to it their investigations, and applied to it the names of _Scillitin_ or _Skuleïn_. Schroff, to whom we are indebted for a valuable monograph on Squill,[2588] infers from his physiological experiments the presence of a non-volatile acrid principle (_Skulein?_), together with scillitin, which latter he supposes to be a glucoside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Use=—Commonly employed as a diuretic and expectorant.

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

1. _Urginea altissima_ Baker (_Ornithogalum altissimum_ L.), a South African species, very closely related to the common squill, and having, as it would appear, exactly the same properties.[2589]

2. _U. indica_ Kth. (_Scilla indica_ Roxb.), a widely diffused plant, occurring in Northern India, the Coromandel Coast, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Senegambia. It is known by the same Arabic and Persian names as _U. maritima_, and its bulb is used for similar purposes. But according to Moodeen Sheriff[2590] it is a poor substitute for the latter, having little or no action when it is old and large.

3. _Scilla indica_ Baker[2591] (non Roxb.), (_Ledebouria hyacinthina_ Roth), native of India and Abyssinia, has a bulb which is often confused in the Indian bazaars with the preceding, but is easily distinguishable when entire by being _scaly_ (not tunicated); it is said to be a better representative of the European squill.[2592]

4. _Drimia ciliaris_ Jacq., a plant of the Cape of Good Hope, of the order _Liliaceæ_. Its bulb much resembles the officinal squill, but has a juice so irritating if it comes in contact with the skin, that the plant is called by the colonists _Jeukbol_, i.e. _Itch-bulb_. It is used medicinally as an emetic, expectorant, and diuretic.[2593]

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

[2589] Pappe, _Floræ Medicæ Capensis Prodromus_, ed. 2, 1857. 41.

[2590] _Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India_, Madras, 1869. 250.

[2591] Saunders, _Refugium Botanicum_, iii. (1870) appendix, p. 12.

[2592] _Suppl. to the Pharm. of India_, 250.

[2593] Pappe, _op. cit._ 42.

MELANTHACEÆ.

RHIZOMA VERATRI ALBI.

_Radix Veratri_, _Radix Hellebori albi_; _White Hellebore_; F. _Racine d’Ellébore blanc_; G. _Weisse Nieswurzel_, _Germer_.

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

=History=—The confusion that existed among the ancients between _Melampodium_, _Helleborus_, and _Veratrum_, makes the identification of the plant under notice extremely unsatisfactory.[2594] It was perfectly described or figured by Brunfels, Tragus, and other botanists of the 16th century, and likewise well known to Gerarde (_circa_ A.D. 1600). Under the names of _Elleborus_ (or _Helleborus albus_) and _Veratrum_, it has had a place in all the London Pharmacopœias. In the British Pharmacopœia (1867) it has been replaced by the nearly allied American species, _Veratrum viride_ Aiton.

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

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

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

=Chemical Composition=—In 1819 Pelletier and Caventou detected in the rhizome of _Veratrum_ a substance which they regarded as identical with veratrine, the existence of which had just been discovered by Meissner in cebadilla seeds. But according to the observations of Maisch (1870) and Dragendorff,[2595] the veratrine of cebadilla cannot be found either in _Veratrum album_ or _V. viride_.

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

[2595] _Beitr. zur gerichtl. Chemie_, St Petersb., 1872. 95.

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

Weppen (1872) has isolated from this drug _Veratramarin_, an amorphous, deliquescent, bitter principle. It occurs in minute quantity only, and is resolvable into sugar and other products. Veratramarin dissolves in water or spirit of wine, not in ether or in chloroform. The same observer has also isolated, to the extent of ½ per mille, _Jervic Acid_ in hard crystals of considerable size,[2596] of the composition C₁₄H₁₀O₁₂ + 2 H₂O. The acid requires 100 parts of water for solution at the ordinary temperature, and a little less of boiling alcohol. It is decidedly acid, and forms well-defined crystallizable salts, containing 4 atoms of the monovalent metals.

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

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

=Commerce=—The drug is imported from Germany in bales. The price-currents distinguish _Swiss_ and _Austrian_, and generally name the drug as “_without fibre_.”

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

=Substitutes=—The rhizome of the Austrian _Veratrum nigrum_ L. is said to be sometimes collected instead of White Hellebore; it is of much smaller size, and, according to Schroff, less potent. That of the Mexican _Helonias frigida_ Lindley (_Veratrum frigidum_ Schl.) appears to exactly resemble that of _Veratrum album_.

RHIZOMA VERATRI VIRIDIS.

_American White Hellebore_,[2597] _Indian Poke_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Veratrum viride_ Aiton, a plant in every respect closely resembling _V. album_, of which it is one of the numerous forms. In fact, the green-coloured variety of the latter (_V. Lobelianum_ Bernh.), a plant not uncommon in the mountain meadows of the Alps, comes so near to the American _V. viride_ that we are unable to point out any important character by which the two can be separated.[2598] The American _Veratrum_ is common in swamps and low grounds from Canada to Georgia.

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

[2597] The name _Green Hellebore_ is sometimes applied to this drug, but it properly belongs to _Helleborus viridis_ L., which is medicinal in some parts of Europe.

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

=History=—The aborigines of North America were acquainted with the active properties of this plant before their intercourse with Europeans, using it according to Josselyn,[2599] who visited the country in 1638-1671, as a vomit in a sort of ordeal. He calls it _White Hellebore_, and states that it is employed by the colonists as a purgative, antiscorbutic and insecticide.

Kalm (1749) states[2600] that the early settlers used a decoction of the roots to render their seed-maize poisonous to birds, which were made “delirious” by eating the grain, but not killed; and this custom was still practised in New England in 1835 (Osgood).

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

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

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

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

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

=Chemical Composition=—No chemical difference between _Veratrum viride_ and _V. album_ has yet been ascertained. The presence of veratrine, suspected by previous chemists, was asserted by Worthington[2601] in 1839, J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia in 1857, and S. R. Percy in 1864. Scattergood[2602] obtained from the American drug 0·4 per cent. of this alkaloid, which however, in consequence of some observations of Dragendorff (p. 694), we must hold to be not identical with that of cebadilla. As stated in a previous page jervine and veratroïdine are present as in the White Hellebore of Europe. Robbins[2603] further isolated _Veratridine_, a crystallized alkaloid possessed of a similar physiological action to that of veratrine, though in a less degree. Veratridine is readily soluble in ether; its solution in concentrated sulphuric acid is at first yellow, changing quickly to a pink-red, and, after several hours’ standing, assumes a clear indigo-blue colour, much the same as that displayed by veratrine _if mixed with sugar_ (Weppen’s test, 1874). The resin of the drug may be prepared by exhausting it with alcohol and precipitating with boiling acidulated water, repeating the process in order to entirely eliminate the alkaloids. It is a dark brown mass, yielding about a fourth of its weight to ether. Scattergood obtained it to the extent of 4½ per cent. By exhausting the drug successively with ether, absolute alcohol and spirit of wine, we extracted from it not less than 31 per cent. of a soft resinoid mass. Worthington pointed out the presence of gallic acid and of sugar.

[2599] _New England’s Rarities discovered_, Lond. 1672. 43; also _Account of two Voyages to New England_, Lond., 1674, 60. 76.

[2600] _Travels in North America_, vol. ii. (1771) 91.

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

[2602] _Proc. of Am. Pharm. Assoc._ 1862. 226.

[2603] _Ibid._, 1877. 439. 523.

=Uses=—_Veratrum viride_ has of late been much recommended as a cardiac, arteral and nervous sedative. It is stated to lower the pulse, the respiration and beat of the body, not to be narcotic, and rarely to occasion purging;[2604] but to what principle these effects are due has not yet been ascertained. By some observers, as Bigelow,[2605] Fée,[2606] Schroff,[2607] and Oulmont,[2608] it is alleged to have the same medicinal powers as the European _Veratrum album_.

SEMEN SABADILLÆ.

_Fructus Sabadillæ_; _Cebadilla_, _Cevadilla_; F. _Cévadille_; G. _Sabadillsamen_, _Läusesamen_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Asagræa officinalis_ Lindley (_Veratrum officinale_ Schlecht, _Sabadilla officinarum_ Brandt, _Schœnocaulon officinale_ A. Gray).—A bulbous plant, growing in Mexico, in grassy places on the eastern declivities of the volcanic range of the Cofre de Perote, and Orizaba, near Teosolo, Huatusco and Zacuapan, down to the sea-shore, also in Guatemala. Cebadilla is (or was) cultivated near Vera Cruz, Alvarado and Tlacatalpan in the Gulf of Mexico.

Another form of _Asagræa_, first noticed by Berg,[2609] but of late more particularly by Ernst of Caracas, who thinks it may constitute a distinct species, is found in plenty on grassy slopes, 3,500 to 4,000 feet above the sea-level, in the neighbourhood of Caracas, and southward in the hilly regions bordering the valley of the Tuy.[2610] It differs chiefly in having broader and more carinate leaves.[2611] Of late years it has furnished large quantities of seed, which, freed from their capsules, have been shipped from La Guaira to Hamburg.

[2604] Cutter, _Lancet_, Jan. 4, Aug. 16, 1862; _Pharm. Journ._ iv. (1863) 134.

[2605] _American Medical Botany_, ii. (1819) 121-136.

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

[2607] _Medizinische Jahrbücher_, xix. (Vienna, 1863) 129-148.

[2608] Buchner’s _Repertorium für Pharmacie_, xviii. (1868) 50; also Wiggers and Husemann’s _Jahresbericht_, xviii. 1868. 505.

[2609] Berg u. Schmidt, _Offiz. Gewächse_, i. (1858) tab. ix. e. “_Sabadilla officinarum_.”

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

[2611] _Veratrum Sabadilla_ Retzius is stated by Lindley (_Flora Medica_, p. 586) to be a native of Mexico and the West Indian Islands, and to furnish a portion of the cebadilla seeds of commerce. The plant is unknown to us: we have searched for it in vain in the herbaria of Kew and the British Museum. It is not mentioned as West Indian by Grisebach (_Flor. of Brit. W. I. Islands_, 1864; _Cat. Plant. Cubensium_, 1866). The figure by Descourtilz (_Flor. méd. des Antilles_, iii. 1827. t. 1859) who had the plant growing at St. Domingo, shows it to resemble _Veratrum album_ L., and therefore to be very different from _Asagræa_.

=History=—Cebadilla was first described in 1517 by Monardes, who states that it is used by the Indians of New Spain as a caustic and corrosive application to wounds; but it does not seem to have been brought into European commerce, for neither Parkinson who described it in 1640 as the _Indian Causticke Barley_, nor Ray (1693) did more than copy from Monardes. It was regarded in Germany a rare drug even in 1726, but in the latter half of the last century it began to be recommended in France and Germany for the destruction of pediculi. A famous composition for this purpose was the _Poudre des Capucins_, consisting of a mixture of stavesacre, tobacco, and cebadilla, which was applied either dry or made into an ointment with lard.[2612] Cebadilla was also administered combined into a pill with gamboge and valerian,[2613] for the destruction of intestinal worms, but its virulent action made it hazardous.

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

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

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

=Chemical Composition=—Meissner, an apothecary of Halle, Prussia, in 1819 discovered in cebadilla a basic substance, which he termed _Sabadilline_; in publishing, in 1821, the description of it the word “_alkaloid_” was introduced by Meissner at that occasion. The name _Veratrine_[2614] was applied likewise in 1819 by Pelletier and Caventou to a similar preparation. For many years this substance was known only as an amorphous powder, in which state it frequently contained a considerable proportion of resin; but in 1855 it was obtained by G. Merck in large rhombic prisms. Cebadilla yields only about 3 per mille of veratrine. The alkaloid is easily soluble in spirit of wine, ether or chloroform; these solutions, as well as the watery solutions of its salts, are devoid of rotatory power. Veratrine, like the drug from which it is derived, occasions, if inhaled, prolonged sternutation.

[2612] Murray, _Apparatus Medicaminum_, v. (1790) 171; Mérat and De Lens, _Dict. Mat. Méd._ vi. (1834) 862.

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

[2614] So called from Schlechtendal’s name for the plant, _Veratrum officinale_.

Again, in 1834, Conerbe described an alkaloid from cebadilla under the name of _Sabadilline_, and _Weigelin_ (1871) another called _Sabatrine_.

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

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

{(OCH₃)₂ C₆H₃ { {COOH

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

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

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

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

CORMUS COLCHICI.

_Tuber vel Bulbus vel Radix Colchici_; _Meadow Saffron Root_; F. _Bulbe de Colchique_; G. _Zeitlosenknollen_.

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

=History=—Dioscorides drew attention to the poisonous properties of Κολχικὸν, which he stated to be a plant growing in Messenia and Colchis.[2615]

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

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

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

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

=Development of the Corm=[2616]—At the period of flowering, the corm is surrounded with a brown, closed double membrane or tunic, which is prolonged upwards into a sheath around the flowering stem; at the base of the corm is a tuft of simple roots. On removing the membranes, we find a large, ovoid, fleshy body (Corm No. 1), marked at its apex by a depressed scar, the point of attachment of the flower-stem of the previous year; it is on one side flattened, and traversed by a shallow longitudinal furrow, from the upper part of which arises a much smaller and rudimentary corm (No. 2), bearing a flower-stem. After the production of the flower in the autumn, Corm No. 2 increases in size, throwing up as spring advances its fruit-stem and leaves, and acquires, after these latter have come to maturity, its full development. Corm No. 1 on the other hand, having performed its functions, shrivels and diminishes in size, in proportion as No. 2 advances to maturity, and ultimately decays, leaving a rounded cicatrix, showing its point of attachment to its successor.

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

Schroff has stated, as the result of his experiments,[2617] that the corms possess the greatest medicinal activity when collected in the autumn during or after inflorescence; that they ought to be dried entire, by exposure to the sun and air; and that if thus preserved, they lose none of their strength, even if kept for several years.

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

[2617] _Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für praktische Heilkunde_, 1856, Nos. 22-24; also Wiggers, _Jahresbericht der Pharm._ 1856. 15.

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

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

=Chemical Composition=—The corms contain _Colchicin_ (see next article), starch, sugar, gum, resin, tannin, and fat. When sliced and dried, they lose about 70 per cent. of water.[2618] By drying, the (probably) volatile body upon which the odour of the fresh corm depends, is lost.

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

Other medicinal species of Colchicum.

Under the name _Hermodactylus_,[2619] the corms of other species of _Colchicum_ of Eastern origin anciently enjoyed great reputation in medicine. These corms are in structure precisely like those of ordinary colchicum; they are entire, but deprived of membranous envelopes, of a flattened, heart-shaped form, not wrinkled on the surface, and often very small in size. The starch grains they contain are similar to those of _C. autumnale_, but in some specimens twice as large.

There is a great uncertainty as to the species of _Colchicum_ which furnish hermodactyls. Prof. J. E. Planchon, who has written an elaborate article on the subject,[2620] is in favour of _C. variegatum_ L., a native of the Levant. But one can hardly suppose this plant to be the source of the hermodactyls (_Sūrinjān_) of the Indian bazaars, which are stated to be brought from Kashmir.

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

[2619] The _Bitter Hermodactyl_ of Royle is not in our opinion the produce of a _Colchicum_ at all; see also Cooke in _Pharm. Journ._ April 1, 1871.

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

SEMEN COLCHICI.

_Colchicum Seed_; F. _Semence de Colchique_; G. _Zeitlosensamen_.

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

=History=—Colchicum seeds were introduced into medical practice by Dr. W. H. Williams, of Ipswich, about 1820, on the ground of their being more certain in action than the corm.[2621] They were admitted to the London Pharmacopœia in 1824.

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

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

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

[2621] _London Medical Repository_, Aug. 1, 1820.

[2622] _Pharm. Journ._ ix. (1867) 249.

[2623] _Proc. Americ. Pharm. Assoc._ 1867. 363.

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

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

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

=Uses=—The same as those of the corm.

SMILACEÆ.

RADIX SARSAPARILLÆ.

_Radix Sarzæ vel Sarsæ_; _Sarsaparilla_; F. _Racine de Salsepareille_; G. _Sarsaparillwurzel_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2627] Figured in Nees von Esenbeck’s _Plantæ Medicinales_, suppl. tab. 7.

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

_S. papyracea_, described by Poiret[2628] in 1804, and figured by Martius,[2629] is but very imperfectly known. It has foliage resembling that of _S. officinalis_, but, judging from Spruce’s specimens (No. 1871) collected on the Rio Negro, a _multangular_ stem. It is probably the source of the _Pará Sarsaparilla_.

_S. cordato-ovata_ Rich. is a doubtful plant, perhaps identical with _S. Schomburgkiana_ Knth., a Panama species. Pöppig alleges that its root is mixed with that of the plant which he calls _S. syphilitica_.

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

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

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

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

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

[2628] Lamarck, _Encyclopédie méthodique_, Bot., vi. 1804. 468.

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

[2630] It must not be supposed that _all_ species of _Smilax_ are capable of furnishing the drug. There are many, even South American, which like the _S. aspera_ of Europe, have _thin, wiry_ roots, which would never pass for medicinal sarsaparilla.

[2631] _Monographiæ phanerogamarum_, i. (1878) 6-199.

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

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

[2634] _Curationum medicinalium centuriæ quatuor_, Basileæ, 1556. 365.

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

=Collection of the Root=—Mr. Richard Spruce, the enterprising botanical explorer of the Amazon valley, has communicated to us the following

## particulars on this subject, which we give in his own graphic words:—

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

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

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

[2636] Basileæ, 1559, fol.

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

[2638] See Appendix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(A.) _Mealy Sarsaparillas._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(B.) _Non-mealy Sarsaparillas._

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2645] _Nat. Hist. of Jamaica_, i. (1707), introduction, p. lxxxvi.

[2646] _Blue Books—Island of Jamaica_ for 1870 and 1871.

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

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

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

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

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

[2649] _Yearbook of Pharm._ 1878. 136.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUBER CHINÆ.

_Radix Chinæ_; _China Root_; F. _Squine_; G. _Chinawurzel_.

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

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

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

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

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

[2653] Trimen’s _Journ. of Bot._ i. (1872) 102.—_S. glabra_ and _S. lanceæfolia_ have been figured by Seemann in his _Botany of the Herald_, 1852-57, tabb. 99-100. _S. China_ is well represented in the Kew Herbarium, where we have examined specimens from Nagasaki, Hakodadi, and Yokohama; from Loochoo, Corea, Formosa, Ningpo; and Indian ones from Khasia, Assam, and Nepal.

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

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

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

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

[2655] ... _Bericht der Natur ... der Wurtzel China_, Würzburg, 1548. 4°.

[2656] The earliest of which is by Andreas Vesalius, _Epistola rationem, modumque pro pinandi radicis_ Chymae (sic!) _decocti, quo nuper invictissimus Carolus V. imperator usus est_, Venet., 1546.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2658] See p. 324, note 2.—We quote this statement with reserve, knowing that both Chinese and Europeans sometimes confound China root with the singular fungoid production termed _Pachyma Cocos_. The first is called in Chinese _Tu-fuh-ling_,—the second _Fuh-ling_ or _Pe-fuh-ling_.—See Hanbury, _Pharm. Journ._ iii. (1862) 421; and _Science Papers_, 202. 267.—F. Porter Smith, _Mat. Med. and Nat. Hist. of China_, 1871. 198; Dragendorff, _Volksmedicin Turkestans_ in Buchner’s _Repertorium_, xxii. (1873) 135.

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

GRAMINEÆ.

SACCHARUM.

_Sugar_, _Cane-Sugar_, _Sucrose_; F. _Sucre_, _Sucre de canne_; G. _Zucker_, _Rohrzucker_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Saccharum officinarum_ L., the Sugar Cane. The jointed stem is from 6 to 12 feet high, solid, hard, dense, internally juicy, and hollow only in the flowering tops. Several varieties are cultivated, as the _Country Cane_, the original form of the species; the _Ribbon Cane_, with purple or yellow stripes along the stem; the _Bourbon_ or _Tahiti Cane_, a more elongated, stronger, more hairy and very productive variety. _Saccharum violaceum_ Tussac, the _Batavian Cane_, is also considered to be a variety; but the large _S. chinense_ Roxb. introduced from Canton in 1796 into the Botanic Gardens of Calcutta, may be a distinct species; it has a long, slender, erect panicle, while that of _S. officinarum_ is hairy and spreading, with the ramifications alternate and more compound, not to mention other differences in the leaves and flowers.

The sugar cane is cultivated from cuttings, the small seeds very seldom ripening. It succeeds in almost all tropical and subtropical countries, reaching in South America and Mexico an elevation above the sea of 5000-6000 feet. It is cultivated in most parts of India and China up to 30-31° N. lat, the mountainous regions excepted.

From the elaborate investigations of Ritter,[2660] it appears that _Saccharum officinarum_ was originally a native of Bengal, and of the Indo-Chinese countries, as well as of Borneo, Java, Bali, Celebes, and other islands of the Malay Archipelago. But there is no evidence that it is now found any where in a wild state.

=History=[2661]—The sugar cane was doubtless known in India from time immemorial, and grown for food as it still is at the present day, chiefly in those regions which are unsuited for the manufacture of sugar.[2662]

Herodotus, Theophrastus, Seneca, Strabo, and other early writers had some knowledge of raw sugar, which they speak of as the _Honey of Canes_ or _Honey made by human hands_, not that of bees; but it was not until the commencement of the Christian era, that the ancients manifested an undoubted acquaintance with sugar, under the name of _Saccharon_.

Thus Dioscorides[2663] about A.D. 77 mentions the concreted honey called Σάκχαρον found upon canes (ὲπὶ τῶν καλάμων) in India and Arabia Felix, and which in substance and brittleness resemble salt. Pliny evidently knew the same thing under the name _Saccharum_; and the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, A.D. 54-68, states that honey from canes, called σάκχαρι, is exported from Barygaza, in the Gulf of Cambay, to the ports of the Red Sea, west of the _Promontorium Aromatum_, that is to say to the coast opposite Aden. Whether at that period sugar was produced in Western India, or was brought thither from the Ganges, is a point still doubtful.

[2660] _Erdkunde von Asien_, ix. West-Asien, Berlin, 1840. pp. 230-291.

[2661] The learned investigations of Heyd, _Levantehandel_, ii. (1879) 665-667, afford exhaustive information about the medicinal history of sugar.

[2662] The production which the English translators of the Bible have rendered _Sweet Cane_, and which is alluded to by the prophets Isaiah (ch. xliii. 24) and Jeremiah (ch. vi. 20) as a commodity imported from a distant country, has been the subject of much discussion. Some have supposed it to be the sugar cane; others, an aromatic grass (_Andropogon_). In our opinion, there is more reason to conclude that it was _Cassia Bark_.

[2663] Lib. ii. c. 104.

Bengal is probably the country of the earliest manufacture of sugar; hence its names in all the languages of Western-Asiatic and European nations are derived from the Sanskrit _Sharkarā_, signifying a substance in the shape of small grains or stones. It is strange that this word contains no allusion to the _taste_ of the substance.

_Candy_, as sugar in large crystals is called, is derived from the Arabic _Kand_ or _Kandat_, a name of the same signification. An old Sanskrit name of Central Bengal is _Gura_, whence is derived the word _Gula_, meaning _raw sugar_, a term for sugar universally employed in the Malayan Archipelago, where on the other hand they have their own names for the sugar cane, although not for sugar. This fact again speaks in favour of Ritter’s opinion, that the preparation of sugar in a dry crystalline state is due to the inhabitants of Bengal. Sugar under the name of _Shi-mi_, i.e. _Stone-honey_, is frequently mentioned in the ancient Chinese annals among the productions of India and Persia; and it is recorded that the Emperor Tai-tsung, A.D. 627-650, sent an envoy to the kingdom of Magadha in India, the modern Bahar, to learn the method of manufacturing sugar.[2664] The Chinese, in fact, acknowledge that the Indians between A.D. 766 and 780 were their first teachers in the art of refining sugar, for which they had no particular ancient written character.

An Arabian writer, Abu Zayd al Hasan,[2665] informs us that about A.D. 850 the sugar cane was growing on the north-eastern shore of the Persian Gulf; and in the following century, the traveller Ali Istakhri[2666] found sugar abundantly produced in the Persian province of Kuzistan, the ancient Susiana. About the same time (A.D. 950), Moses of Chorene, an Armenian, also stated that the manufacture of sugar was flourishing near the celebrated school of medicine at Jondisabur in the same province, and remains of this industry in the shape of millstones, &c., still exist near Ahwas.

Persian physicians of the 10th and 11th centuries, as Rhazes, Haly Abbas, and Avicenna, introduced sugar into medicine. The Arabs cultivated the sugar cane in many of their Mediterranean settlements, as Cyprus, Sicily, Italy, Northern Africa, and Spain. The Calendar of Cordova[2667] shows that as early as A.D. 961 the cultivation was well understood in Spain, which is now the only country in Europe where sugar mills still exist.[2668]

William II., King of Sicily, presented in A.D. 1176 to the convent of Monreale mills for grinding cane, the culture of which still lingers at Avola near Syracuse, though only for the sake of making rum. In 1767, the sugar plantations and sugar houses at this spot were described by a traveller[2669] as “worth seeing.”

During the middle ages England, in common with the rest of Northern Europe, was supplied with sugar from the Mediterranean countries, especially Egypt and Cyprus. It was imported from Alexandria as early as the end of the 10th century by the Venetians, with whom it long remained an important article of trade. Thus we find[2670] that in A.D. 1319, a merchant in Venice, Tommaso Loredano, shipped to London 100,000 lb. of sugar, the proceeds of which were to be returned in _wool_, which at that period constituted the great wealth of England. Sugar was then very dear: thus from 1259 to 1350, the average price in England was about 1_s._ per lb., and from 1351 to 1400, 1_s._ 7_d._[2671] In France during the same period it must have been largely obtainable, though doubtless expensive. King John II. ordered in 1353 that the apothecaries of Paris should not use honey in making those confections which ought to be prepared with the good white sugar called _cafetin_,[2672] a name alluding to the peculiar shape of the loaf which was not uncommon at that time.[2673]

[2664] Bretschneider, _Chinese Botanical Works_, 1870. 46.

[2665] Ritter, _l.c._ 286.

[2666] P. 57 of the book quoted in the Appendix.

[2667] _Le Calendrier de Cordoue de l’année_ 961, par R. Dozy, Leyde, 1873. 25. 41. 91.

[2668] There are several in the neighbourhood of Malaga.

[2669] Riedesel, _Travels through Sicily_, Lond. 1773. 67.

[2670] Marin, _Commercio de’ Veneziani_, v. 306.

[2671] Rogers, _Hist. of Agriculture and Prices in England_, i. (1866) 633. 641.

[2672] _Ordonnances des rois de France_, ii. (1729) 535.

[2673] Several other varieties of sugar occurring in the mediæval literature are explained in the _Documente_ (quoted at page 404, footnote 7) p. 32.

The importance of the sugar manufacture in the East was witnessed in the latter half of the 13th century by Marco Polo;[2674] and in 1510 by Barbosa and other European travellers; and the trading nations of Europe rapidly spread the cultivation of the cane over all the countries, of which the climate was suitable. Thus its introduction into Madeira goes back as far as A.D. 1420; it reached St. Domingo in 1494,[2675] the Canary Islands in 1503, Brazil in the beginning of the 16th century, Mexico about 1520, Guiana about 1600, Guadaloupe in 1644, Martinique in 1650,[2676] Mauritius towards 1750, Natal[2677] and New South Wales, about 1852,[2678] while from a very early period the sugar cane had been propagated from the Indian Archipelago over all the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The ancient cultivation in Egypt, probably never quite extinct, has been revived on an extensive scale by the Khedive Ismail Pasha. There were 13 sugar factories, making raw sugar, belonging to the Egyptian Government at work in 1872, and about 100,000 acres of land devoted to sugar cane. The export of sugar from Egypt in 1872 reached 2 millions of _kantars_, or about 89,200 tons.[2679]

The imperfection of organic chemistry previous to the middle of the 18th century, permitted no exact investigations into the chemical nature of sugar. Marggraf of Berlin[2680] proved in 1747 that sugar occurs in many vegetables, and succeeded in obtaining it in a pure crystallized state from the juice of beet root. The enormous practical importance of this discovery did not escape him, and he caused serious attempts to be made for rendering it available, which were so far successful that the first manufactory of beet-sugar was established in 1796 by Achard at Kunern in Silesia.

This new branch of industry[2681] was greatly promoted by the prohibitive measures, whereby Napoleon excluded colonial sugar from almost the whole Continent; and it is now carried forward on such a scale that 640,000 to 680,000 tons of beet root sugar are annually produced in Europe, the entire production of cane-sugar being estimated at 1,260,000 to 1,413,000 tons.[2682]

Among the British colonies, Mauritius,[2683] British Guiana,[2684] Trinidad,[2685] Barbados,[2686] and Jamaica,[2687] produce at present the largest quantity of sugar.

[2674] Yule, _Book of Ser Marco Polo_, ii. (1871) 79. 171. 180. &c.

[2675] _Letters of Christ._ _Columbus_ (Hakluyt Society) 1870. 81-84.

[2676] De Candolle, _Géogr. botanique_, 836.

[2677] The value of the sugar exported from Natal in 1871 reached the astonishing amount of £180,496 and £135,201 in 1876.

[2678] Yet owing to the gold discoveries, the propagation of the cane in Australia was little thought of until about 1866 or 1867, when small lots of sugar were made.

[2679] Consul Rogers, _Report on the Trade of Cairo for 1872_, presented to Parliament.

[2680] _Expériences chymiques faites dans le dessein de tirer un véritable sucre de diverses plantes qui croissent dans nos contrées_, par Mr. Marggraf, traduit du latin—_Hist. de l’Académie royale des sciences et belles-lettres_, année 1747 (Berlin 1749) 79-90.

[2681] And also that of _milk sugar_, which was then much used on the Continent to _adulterate_ cane-sugar.

[2682] _Produce Markets Review_, March 28, 1868.

[2683] 2,255,249 quintals (one quintal = 108 lb. avdp.) in 1876.

[2684] 120,030 hhds (one hogshead = 1,792 lb.) in 1876.

[2685] 114,968,384 lb. in 1876.

[2686] 38,013 hhds. in 1876.

[2687] 29,074 hhds. in 1876.

=Production=—No crystals are found in the parenchyme of the cane, the sugar existing as an aqueous solution, chiefly within the cells of the centre of the stem. The transverse section of the cane exhibits numerous fibro-vascular bundles, scattered through the tissue, as in other monocotyledonous stems; yet these bundles are most abundant towards the exterior, where they form a dense ring covered with a thin epidermis, which is very hard by reason of the silica which is deposited in it.[2688] In the centre of the stem the vascular bundles are few in number; the parenchyme is far more abundant, and contains in its thin-walled cells an almost clear solution of sugar, with a few small starch granules and a little soluble albuminous matter. This last is met with in larger quantity in the cambial portion of the vascular bundles. Pectic principles are combined with the walls of the medullary cells, which however do not swell much in water (Wiesner).

From these glances at the microscopical structure of the cane, the process to be followed for obtaining the largest possible quantity of sugar becomes evident. This would consist in simply macerating thin slices of the cane in water, which would at once penetrate the parenchyme loaded with sugar, without much attacking the fibro-vascular bundles containing more of albuminous than of saccharine matter. By this method, the epidermal layer of the cane would not become saturated with sugar, nor would it impede its extraction,—results which necessarily follow when the cane is crushed and pressed.[2689]

The process hitherto generally practised in the colonies,—that of extracting the juice of the cane by crushing and pressing,—has been elaborately described and criticised by Dr. Icery of Mauritius.[2690] In that island, the cane, six varieties of which are cultivated, is when mature composed of _Cellulose_, 8 to 12 per cent.; _Sugar_, 18 to 21; _Water_, including albuminous matter and salts, 67 to 73. Of the entire quantity of juice in the cane, from 70 to 84 per cent. is extracted for evaporation, and yields in a crystalline state about three-fifths of the sugar which the cane originally contained. This juice, called in French _vesou_, has on an average the following composition:—

Albuminous matters 0·03 Granular matter (starch?) 0·10 Mucilage containing nitrogen 0·22 Salts, mostly of organic acids[2691] 0·29 Sugar 18·36 Water 81·00 ------ 100·00

[2688] Stems of American sugar cane, dried at 100° C., yielded 4 per cent of ash, nearly half of which was silica.—Popp, in Wiggers’ _Jahresbericht_, 1870. 35.

[2689] The plan of obtaining a syrup by macerating the sliced fresh cane, has been tried in Guadaloupe, but abandoned owing to some practical difficulties in exhausting the cane and in carrying on the evaporation of the liquors with sufficient rapidity. Experiments for extracting a pure syrup by means of cold water from the _sliced and dried_ cane, seem to promise good results.—See a paper by Dr. H. S. Mitchell in _Journ. of Soc. of Arts_, Oct. 23, 1868.

[2690] _Annales de Chimie et de Physique_, v. (1865) 350-410.—See also, for Cuba, Alvaro Reynoso _Ensayo sobre el cultivo de la caña de Azúcar_, Madrid, 1865. 359.—For British Guiana, _Catal. of Contributions from Brit. Guiana to Paris Exhib._ 1867. pp. xxxviii.-xli.

[2691] _Aconitic Acid_ (p. 11) has been met with by Behr (1877) in West Indian molasses.

There is also present in the juice a very small amount of a slightly aromatic substance (essential oil?) to which the _crude_ cane sugar owes a peculiar odour which is not observed in sugar from other sources. The first two classes of the above enumerated substances render the juice turbid, and greatly promote its fermentation, but they easily separate by boiling, and the juice may then be kept a short time without undergoing change. In many colonies the yield is said to be far inferior to what it should be; yet the juice is obtained in a state allowing of easier purification, when its extraction is not carried to the furthest limit.

In beet root as well as in the sugar cane, cane-sugar only was said to be present; Icery however has proved that in the cane some uncrystallizable (inverted) sugar is always present. Its quantity varies much, according to the places where the cane grows, and its age. The tops of quick-growing young canes yielded a _vesou_ containing 2·4 per cent. of uncrystallizable sugar; 3·6 of cane sugar; and 94 of water. Moist and shady situations greatly promote the formation of the former kind of sugar, which also prevails in the tops, chiefly when immature. Hence that observer concludes that at first the uncrystallizable variety of sugar is formed, and subsequently transformed into cane-sugar by the force of vegetation, and especially by the influence of light. Perfectly ripened canes contain only ¹/₇₅ to ¹/₅₀ of all their sugar in the uncrystallizable state.

=Description and Chemical Composition=—Cane-sugar is the type of a numerous class of well-defined organic compounds, of frequent occurrence throughout the vegetable and animal kingdoms, or artificially obtained by decomposing certain other substances; in the latter case, however, glucose or some other sugar than cane-sugar is obtained. cane-sugar, C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁, or C₁₂H₁₄(OH)₈O₃, melts, without change of composition, at 160° C., several other kinds of sugar giving off water, with which they form crystallized compounds at the ordinary temperature.

Cane-sugar forms hard crystals of the oblique rhombic system, having a sp. gr. of 1·59. Two parts are dissolved at 15° C. by one part of water,[2692] and by much less at an elevated temperature; a slight depression of the thermometer is observable in the former case. One part of sugar dissolved in one of water, forms a liquid of sp. gr. 1·23; two of sugar in one of water, a liquid of sp. gr. 1·33. Sugar requires 65 parts of spirit of wine (sp. gr. 0·84) or 80 parts of anhydrous alcohol for solution; ether does not act upon it.

[2692] It is commonly stated that _three_ parts can be dissolved in one of cold water; but this is not the fact.

A ray of polarized light is deviated by an aqueous solution of cane sugar to the _right_, but by some other kinds of sugar to the _left_, as first shown by Biot. These optical powers are highly important, both in the practical estimation of solutions of sugar, and in scientific studies connected with sugar or saccharogenous substances. The optical as well as chemical properties of sugar are altered by many circumstances, as the action of dilute acids or alkalis, or by the influence of minute fungi. Yeast occasions sugar to undergo alcoholic fermentation. Other ferments set up an action by which butyric, lactic or propionic acid are produced.

Cane-sugar is of a purer and sweeter taste than most other sugars. Though it does not alter litmus paper, yet with alkalis it forms compounds some of which are crystallizable. From an alkaline solution of tartrate of copper, cane-sugar throws down no protoxide, unless after boiling.

If sugar is kept a short time in a state of fusion at 160° C., it is converted into one molecule of _Grape Sugar_ and one of _Levulosan_; the former can be either isolated by crystallization or destroyed by fermentation, the latter being incapable of crystallizing or of undergoing fermentation.

Cane-sugar which has been melted at 160° C. is deliquescent and readily soluble in anhydrous alcohol, and its rotatory power is diminished or entirely destroyed. It is no longer crystallizable, and its fusing point has become reduced to about 93° C. Yet before undergoing these evident alterations, it assumes an amorphous condition if allowed to melt with a third of its weight of water, becoming always a little coloured by pyrogenous products. In the course of time, however, this amorphous sugar loses its transparency and reassumes the crystalline form. Like sulphur and arsenious acid, it is capable of existing either in a crystallized or an amorphous state.

If sugar is heated to about 190° C. water is evolved, and we obtain the dark brown products commonly called _Caramel_ or _Burnt Sugar_. They are of a peculiar sharp flavour, of a bitter taste, incapable of fermenting and deliquescent. One of the constituents of caramel, _Caramelane_, C₁₂H₁₈O₉, has been obtained by Gélis (1862) perfectly colourless. When the heat is augmented, the sugar at last suffers a decomposition resembling that which produces tar (see p. 621), its pyrogenous products being the same or very analogous to those of the dry distillation of wood.

=Varieties of Cane-sugar=—The experiments of Marggraf referred to at p. 717, note 9, showed that cane-sugar is by no means confined to the sugar cane; and it is in fact extracted on an extensive scale from several other plants, of which the following deserve mention:—

_Beet Root_—The manufacture of cane-sugar from the fleshy root of a cultivated variety of _Beta maritima_ L., is now largely carried on in Continental Europe and in America, and with admirable results.

Of fresh beet root, 100 parts contain on an average 80 per cent. of water, 11 to 13 of cane-sugar, and about 7 per cent. of pectic and albuminous matters, cellulose and salts. Of the total amount of juice which the root contains, eight-ninths are extracted; and by the best process now in practice, 8 to 9 parts of sugar from every 100 parts of fresh root. The yield of crystalline sugar is still on the increase, owing to continual improvements in the mechanical and chemical parts of the process.

_Palm_—Several species are of great utility for the production of the sugar called by Europeans _Jaggery_.[2693] This substance is obtained by the natives of India in the following manner:—The young growing spadix, or flowering shoot, of the palm is cut off near its apex; and an earthen vessel is tied on to the stump to receive the juice that flows out. This vessel is emptied daily; while to promote a continuous flow of sap, a thin slice is cut from the wounded end. The juice thus collected, if at once boiled down, yields the crude brown sugar known as _jaggery_. If allowed to ferment, it becomes the inebriating drink called _Toddy_ or palm wine; or it may be converted into vinegar. The spirit distilled from toddy is _Arrack_.

[2693] A word of Sanskrit origin, corrupted from the Canarese _sharkari_.

Of the sugar-yielding palms of Asia, _Phœnix silvestris_ Roxb., which is supposed to be the wild form of the date palm, is one of the more important. The coco-nut palm, _Cocos nucifera_ L.; the magnificent Palmyra palm, _Borassua flabelliformis_ L.; and the Bastard Sago, _Caryota urens_ L., also furnish important quantities of sugar. In the Indian Archipelago, sugar is obtained from the sap of _Arenga saccharifera_ Mart., which grows there in abundance as well as in the Philippines and the Indo-Chinese countries. It is also got from _Nipa fruticans_ Thunb., a tree of the low coast regions, extensively cultivated in Tavoy.

De Vry[2694] has advocated the manufacture of sugar from the palm as the most philosophical, seeing that its juice is a nearly pure aqueous solution of sugar: that as no mineral constituents are removed from the soil in this juice, the costly manuring, as well as the laborious and destructive processes required to eliminate the juice from such plants as the sugar cane and beet root, are avoided. And finally, that palms are perennial, and can many of them be cultivated on a soil unsuitable for any cereal.

_Maple_—In America, considerable quantities of sugar identical with that of the cane are obtained in the woods of the Northern United States and of Canada, by evaporating the juice of maples. The species chiefly employed are _Acer saccharinum_ Wangenh., the Common Sugar Maple, and its variety (var. _nigrum_) the Black Sugar Maple. _A. Pennsylvanicum_ L., _A. Negundo_ L. (_Negundo aceroides_ Moench.) and _A. dasycarpum_ Ehrh. are also used; the sap of the last is said to be the least saccharine.

As the juice of these trees yields not more than about 2 per cent. of sugar, it requires for its solidification a large expenditure of fuel. The manufacture of maple sugar can therefore be advantageously carried on only in countries remote from markets whence ordinary sugar can be procured, or in regions where fuel is extremely plentiful. In North America it flourishes only between 40° and 43° N. lat. We are not aware of any estimate of the total production of maple sugar. The Census of Pennsylvania of 1870 gave the following figures as referring to its manufacture in that State:—

1850 1860 1870 2,326,525 lb. 2,768,965 lb. 1,545,917 lb.[2695]

_Sorghum_—Another plant of the same order as _Saccharum_ is _Sorghum saccharatum_ Pers. (_Holcus saccharatus_ L.) a native of Northern China,[2696] which has of late been much tried as a sugar-yielding plant both in Europe and North America; yet without any great success, as the purification of the sugar is accomplished with peculiar difficulty. As in the sugar cane, there are in sorghum crystallizable and uncrystallizable sugars, the former being at its maximum amount when the grain reaches maturity. The importance of the plant however is rapidly increasing on account of the value of its leaves and grain as food for horses and cattle, and of its stems which can be employed in the manufacture of paper and of alcohol.

[2694] _Journ. de Pharm._ i. (1865) 270.

[2695] Consul Kortright, in _Consular Reports_ presented to Parliament, July 1872, p. 988.

[2696] Introduced into Europe in 1850, by M. de Montigny, French Consul at Shanghai.—Sicard, _Monographie de la Canne à sucre de la Chine, dite_ Sorgho à sucre, Marseille, 1856; Joulie, _Journ. de Pharm._ i. (1865) 188.

=Commerce=—The value of the sugar imported into the United Kingdom is constantly increasing, as shown by the following figures:—

1868 1870 1872 _Unrefined_ £13,339,758 £14,440,502 £18,044,898 _Refined_ £1,156,188 £2,744,366 £3,142,703

The quantity of _Unrefined Sugar_ imported in 1872 was 13,776,696 cwt., of which about 3,000,000 cwt. were furnished by the Spanish West India Islands, 2,700,000 cwt. by the British West India Islands, 1,800,000 cwt. by Brazil, 1,100,000 cwt. by France, and 960,000 cwt. by Mauritius.

Of _Refined Sugar_ the imports from France and Belgium into the United Kingdom were—

1874 1875 1876 133,800 102,300 92,044 tons.

=Uses=—Refined sugar is employed in pharmacy for making syrups, electuaries and lozenges, and is useful not merely for the sake of covering the unpleasant taste of other drugs, but also on account of a preservative influence which it exerts over their active constituents.

Muscovado or Raw Sugar is not used in medicine. The dark uncrystallizable syrup, known in England as _Molasses_, _Golden Syrup_, and _Treacle_,[2697] and in foreign pharmacy as _Syrupus Hollandicus vel communis_, which is formed in the preparation of pure sugar by the influence of heat, alkaline bodies, microscopic vegetation, and the oxygen of the air, is sometimes employed for making pill masses. The treacle of colonial sugar alone is adapted for this purpose, that of beet root having a disagreeable taste, and containing from 19 to 21 per cent. of oxalate, tartrate and malate of potassium, and only 56 to 64 of sugar.[2698] The treacle of colonial sugar usually contains 5 to 7 per cent. of salts.

[2697] How the word _Treacle_ came to be transferred from its application to an opiate medicine to become a name for _molasses_, we know not. In the description of sugar-making given by Salmon in his _English Physician or Druggist’s Shop opened_, Lond. 1663, treacle is never mentioned, but only “_melussas_.”

[2698] Landolt, Zeitschr. _für analyt. Chem._ vii. (1868) 1-29.

HORDEUM DECORTICATUM.

_Hordeum perlatum_, _Fructus vel Semen Hordei_; _Pearl Barley_; F. _Orge mondé ou perlé_; G. _Gerollte Gerste_, _Gerstegraupen_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Hordeum distichum_ L.,—the Common or Long-eared Barley is probably indigenous to western temperate Asia, but has been cultivated for ages throughout the northern hemisphere. In Sweden its cultivation extends as far as 68° 38’ N. lat.; on the Norwegian coast up to the Altenfjord in 70° N. lat.; even in Lapland, it succeeds as high as 900 to 1350 feet above the level of the sea. In several of the southern Swiss Alpine valleys, barley ripens at 5000 feet, and in the Himalaya at 11,000 feet. In the Equatorial Andes, where it is extensively grown, it thrives up to at least 11,000 feet above the sea. No other cereal can be cultivated under so great a variety of climate.

According to Bretschneider,[2699] barley is included among the five cereals which it is related in Chinese history were sowed by the Emperor Shen-nung, who reigned about 2700 B.C.; but it is not one of the five sorts of grain which are used at the ceremony of ploughing and sowing as now annually performed by the emperors of China.

Theophrastus was acquainted with several sorts of barley (Κριθή), and among them, with the six-rowed kind or _hexastichon_, which is the species that is represented on the coins struck at Metapontum[2700] in Lucania, between the 6th and 2nd centuries B.C.

[2699] _On Chinese Botanical Works_, etc., Foochow, 1870. 7. 8.

[2700] Metapontum lay in the plain between the rivers Bradano and Basento in the gulf of Taranto.

Strabo and Dioscorides in the 1st century allude to drinks made from barley, which according to Tacitus were even then familiar to the German tribes, as they are known to have been still earlier to the Greeks and Egyptians.

Barley is mentioned in the Bible as a plant of cultivation in Egypt and Syria, and must have been, among the ancient Hebrews, an important article of food, judging from the quantity allowed by Solomon to the servants of Hiram, king of Tyre (B.C. 1015). The tribute of barley paid to King Jotham by the Ammonites (B.C. 741) is also exactly recorded. The ancients were frequently in the practice of removing the hard integuments of barley by roasting it, and using the torrefied grain as food.

=Manufacture=—For use in medicine and as food for the sick, barley is not employed in its crude state, but only when deprived more or less completely of its husk. The process by which this is effected is carried on in mills constructed for the purpose, and consists essentially in passing the grain between horizontal millstones, placed so far apart as to rub off its integuments without crushing it. Barley partially deprived of its husk is known as _Scotch_, _hulled_ or _Pot Barley_. When by longer and closer grinding the whole of the integuments have been removed, and the grain has become completely rounded, it is termed _Pearl Barley_. In the _British Pharmacopœia_ it is this sort alone which is ordered to be used.

=Description=—Pearl Barley is in subspherical or somewhat ovoid grains about 2 lines in diameter, of white farinaceous aspect, often partly yellowish from remains of the adhering husk, which is present on the surface, as well as in the deep longitudinal furrow with which each grain is indented. It has the farinaceous taste and odour which are common to most of the cereal grains.

=Microscopic Structure=—The albumen which constitutes the main portion of the grain is composed of large thin-walled parenchyme, the cells of which on transverse section are seen to radiate from the furrow, and to be lengthened in that direction rather than longitudinally. In the vicinity of the furrow alone the tissue of the albumen is narrower. Its predominating large cells show a polygonal or oval outline, whilst the outer layer is built up of two, three or four rows of thick-walled, coherent, nearly cubic gluten-cells. This layer, about 70 mkm. thick, is coated with an extremely thin brown tegument, to which succeeds a layer about 30 mkm. thick, of densely packed, tabular, greyish or yellowish cells of very small size; this proper coat of the fruit in the furrow is of rather spongy appearance.

In some varieties of barley the fruit is constituted of the above tissues alone and the shell, but in most the paleæ are likewise present. They consist chiefly of long fibrous, thick-walled cells, two or four rows deep, constituting a very hard layer. On tranverse section, this layer forms a coherent envelope about 35 mkm. thick; its cells when examined in longitudinal section show but a small lumen of peculiar undulated outline from secondary deposits.

The gluten-cells varying considerably in the different cereal grains, afford characters enough to distinguish them with certainty. In wheat, for instance, the gluten-cells are in a single row, in rice they form a double or single row, but its cells are transversely lengthened.

The inner tissue of the albumen in barley is filled up with large irregularly lenticular, and with extremely small globular starch granules, the first being 20 to 35 mkm., the latter 1, 2 to 3 mkm. in diameter, with no considerable number of intermediate size. The concentric layers constituting the large granules may be made conspicuous by moistening with chromic acid.

The layer alluded to as being composed of _gluten-cells_ is loaded with extremely small granules of albuminous matters (gluten), which on addition of iodine are coloured intensely yellow. These granules, which, considering barley as an article of food, are of prominent value, are not confined to the gluten-cells, but the neighbouring starch-cells also contain a small amount of them: and in the narrow zone of denser tissue projecting from the furrow into the albumen, protein principles are equally deposited, as shown by the yellow coloration which iodine produces.

The gluten-cells, the _membrane embroynnaire_ of Mège-Mouriès, contain also, according to the researches on bread[2701] made by this chemist (1856), _Cerealin_, an albuminous principle soluble in water, which causes the transformation of starch into dextrin, sugar, and lactic acid. In the husks (_épiderme_, _épicarpe_ and _endocarpe_) of wheat, Mège-Mouriès found some volatile oil and a yellow extractive matter, to which, together with the cerealin, is due the acidity of bread made with the flour containing the bran.

=Chemical Composition=—Barley has been submitted to careful analyses by many chemists, more especially by Lermer.[2702] The grains contain usually 13 to 15 per cent. of water; after drying, they yield to ether 3 per cent. of fat oil, with insignificant proportions of tannic and bitter principles, residing chiefly in the husks. Lermer further found in the whole grains, 63 per cent. of starch, 7 of cellulose, 6·6 of dextrin, 2·5 of nitrogen, a small amount of lactic acid, and 2·4 of ash.

[2701] He actually examined _wheat_, not barley; we assume the chemical constitution of the two grains to be similar.

[2702] Wittstein, _Vierteljahresschr. für prakt. Pharm._ xii. (1863) 4-23.

The analysis of Poggiale (1856) gave nearly the same composition, namely, water 15, oil 2·4, starch 60, cellulose 8·8, albuminous principles 10·7, ash 2·6.

The protein, or albuminous matter consists of different principles, chiefly insoluble in cold water. The soluble portion is partly coagulated on boiling, partly retained in solution: 2·5 per cent. of nitrogen, as above, would answer to about 16 per cent. of albuminous matters. Their soluble part seems to be deposited in the starch-cells, next to the gluten-cells, which latter contain the insoluble portion.

The ash, according to Lermer, contains 29 per cent. of silicic acid, 32·6 of phosphoric acid, 22·7 of potash, and only 3·7 of lime. In the opinion of Salm-Horstmar, fluorine and lithia are indispensable constituents of barley.

The fixed oil of barley, as proved in 1863 by Hanamann, is a compound of glycerin with either a mixture of palmitic and lauric acids, or less probably with a peculiar fatty acid. Beckmann’s _Hordeinic Acid_ obtained in 1855 by distilling barley with sulphuric acid, is probably lauric acid. Lintner (1868) has shown barley to contain also a little _Cholesterin_ (p. 420).

Lastly, Kühnemann (1875) extracted from barley a crystallized dextrogyrate sugar, and (1876) an amorphous lævogyrate mucilaginous substance _Sinistrin_ (see p. 692); according to that chemist, dextrin is altogether wanting in barley.

Barley when malted loses 7 per cent.; it then contains 10 to 12 per cent. of sugar, produced at the expense of the starch; before malting, no sugar is to be found.

=Uses=—Barley as a medicine is unimportant. A decoction is sometimes prescribed as a demulcent or as a diluent of active remedies. An aqueous extract of malt has been employed.

OLEUM ANDROPOGONIS.

_Oleum Graminis Indici_; _Indian Grass Oil_.

=Botanical Origin=—Among the numerous species of _Andropogon_[2703] which have foliage abounding in essential oil, the following furnish the fragrant _Grass Oils_ of commerce:—

1. _Andropogon Nardus_ L.,[2704]—a noble-looking plant, rising when in flower to a height of 6 or more feet, extensively cultivated in Ceylon and Singapore for the production of _Citronella Oil_.

2. _A. citratus_ D.C.,[2705] Lemon Grass,—a large coarse glaucous grass, known only in a cultivated state, and very rarely producing flowers. It is grown in Ceylon and Singapore for the sake of its essential oil, which is called _Lemon Grass Oil_, _Oil of Verbena_ or _Indian Melissa Oil_; it is also commonly met with in gardens throughout India and is not unfrequent in English hothouses. In Java it is called _Sireh_.

3. _A. Schœnanthus_ L.,[2706] a grass of Northern and Central India, having leaves rounded or slightly cordate at the base, yielding by distillation the oil known as _Rúsa Oil_, _Oil of Ginger Grass_ or _of Geranium_.

[2703] Major-General Munro has at our request investigated the botanical characters of the fragrant species of _Andropogon_, and examined a numerous suite of specimens in our possession. The synonyms in foot-notes are given upon his authority.

[2704] _A. Martini_ Thwaites, _Enum. Plantarum Zeylaniæ_ nec aliorum.—Fig. in Bentley and Trimen’s _Med. Plants_,