part ii

(1853) 1866.

[852] Schweinfurth found it in 6° N. lat. and 28-29° E. long., in the country of the Dor, where the tree may also be indigenous.

=History=—The name _Casia_ or _Cassia_ was originally applied exclusively to a bark related to cinnamon which, when rolled into a tube or pipe, was distinguished in Greek by the word σῦριγζ, and in Latin by that of _fistula_. Thus Scribonius Largus,[853] a physician of Rome during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius, with the latter of whom he is said to have visited Britain, A.D. 43, uses the expression “_Casiæ rufæ fistularum_” in the receipt for a collyrium. Galen[854] describing the different varieties of cassia, mentions that called _Gizi_[855] (γίζεις) as being quite like cinnamon or even better; and also names a well-known cheaper sort, having a strong taste and odour which is called _fistula_, because it is rolled up like a tube.

Oribasius, physician to the Emperor Julian in the latter half of the 4th and beginning of the 5th century, describes _Cassia fistula_ as a _bark_ of which there are several varieties, having pungent and astringent properties (“_omnes cassiæ fistulæ vires habent acriter exalfacientes et stringentes_”), and sometimes used in the place of cinnamon.[856]

It is doubtless the same drug which is spoken of by Alexander Trallianus[857] as Κασίας σῦριγζ (_casia fistula_) in connexion with costus, pepper and other aromatics; and named by other Greek writers as Κασία συριγγώδης (_casia fistularis_). Alexander still more distinctly calls it also Κασία αἰγυπτία.[858]

The tree under examination and its fruit were exactly described in the beginning of the 13th century by Abul Abbâs Annâbatî of Sevilla;[859] the fruit, the Cassia Fistula of modern medicine, is noticed by Joannes Actuarius, who flourished at Constantinople towards the close of the 13th century; and as he describes it with particular minuteness,[860] it is evident that he did not consider it well known. The drug is also mentioned by several writers of the school of Salernum. The tree would appear to have found at an early period its way to America, if we are correct in referring to it the Cassia Fistula enumerated by Petrus Martyr among the valuable products of the New World.[861] The drug was a familiar remedy in England in the time of Turner, 1568.[862]

The tree was figured in 1553 by the celebrated traveller Belon who met with it in the gardens of Cairo, and in 1592 by Prosper Alpinus who also saw it in Egypt.

=Description=—The ovary of the flower is one-celled with numerous ovules, which as they advance towards maturity become separated by the growth of intervening septa. The ripe legume is cylindrical, dark chocolate-brown, 1½ to 2 feet long by ¾ to 1 inch in diameter, with a strong short woody stalk, and a blunt end suddenly contracted into a point. The fibro-vascular column of the stalk is divided into two broad parallel seams, the dorsal and ventral sutures, running down the whole length of the pod, The sutures are smooth, or slightly striated longitudinally; one of them is formed of two ligneous bundles coalescing by a narrow line. If the legume is curved, the ventral suture commonly occupies its inner or concave side. The valves of the pods are marked by slight transverse depressions (more evident in small specimens) corresponding to the internal divisions, and also by inconspicuous transverse veins.

[853] _Compositiones Medicamentorum_, cap. 4. sec. 36.

[854] _De Antidot._ i. c. 14.

[855] Noticed likewise among the commodities liable to duty at Alexandria in the 2nd century.—Vincent, _Commerce of the Ancients_, ii. 712.

[856] _Physica Hildegardis_, Argent. 1533. 227.

[857] Libri xii. J. Guinterio interprete, Basil., 1556. lib. vii. c. 8.

[858] Puschmann’s edition (quoted in the appendix) i. 435.

[859] Meyer, _Geschichte der Botanik_, iii. (1856). 226.

[860] “Quemadmodum si ventrem mollire fuerit animus, pruna, et præcipué Damascena adjicimus, atque quippiam feré nigræ nominatæ casiæ. Est autem fructus ejus fistulus et oblongus, nigrum intus humorem concretum gestans, qui haudquaquam una continuitate coaluit, sed ex intervallo tenuibus lignosisque membranulis dirimitur, habens ad speciei propagationem, grana quædam seminalia, siliquæ illi quæ nobis innotuit, adsimilia.”—_Methodus Medendi_, lib. v. c. 2.

[861] _De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis_, Basil. 1521.

[862] _Herball_, part. 3. 20.

Each of the 25 to 100 seeds which a legume contains, is lodged in a cell formed by very thin woody dissepiments. The oval, flattish seed from ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch long, of a reddish-brown colour, contains a large embryo whose yellowish veined cotyledons cross diagonally, as seen on transverse section, the horny white albumen. One side is marked by a dark line (the raphe). A very slender funicle attaches the seed to the ventral suture.

In addition to the seeds, the cells contain a soft saccharine pulp which in the recent state fills them up, but in the imported pods appears only as a thin layer, spread over the septum, of a dark viscid substance of mawkish sweet taste. It is this pulp which is made use of in pharmacy.

=Microscopic Structure=—The bands above described running along the whole pod, are made up of strong fibro-vascular bundles mixed with sclerenchymatous tissue. The valves consist of parenchymatous cells, and the whole pod is coated with an epidermis exhibiting small tabular cells, which are filled with dark granules of tannic matter. A few stomata are also met with. The thin brittle septa of the pod are composed of long ligneous cells, enclosing here and there crystals of oxalate of calcium.

The pulp itself, examined under water, is seen to consist of loose cells, not forming a coherent tissue. They enclose chiefly granules of albuminoid matters and stellate crystals of oxalate of calcium. The cell-wall assumes, on addition of iodine, a blue hue if they have been previously washed by potash lye. The seeds are devoid of starch, but yield a copious amount of thick mucilage, which surrounds them like a halo if they are macerated in water.

=Chemical Composition=—No peculiar principle is known to exist either in the woody or the pulpy portion of cassia fistula. The pulp contains sugar in addition to the commonly occurring bodies noticed in the previous section.

=Uses=—The pulp separated from the woody part of the pods by crushing the latter, digesting them in hot water, and evaporating the strained liquor, is a mild laxative in common domestic use in the South of Europe,[863] but in England scarcely ever now administered except in the form of the well-known _Lenitive Electuary_ (_Confectio sennæ_) of which it is an ingredient.

=Commerce=—Cassia fistula is shipped to England from the East and West Indies, but chiefly from the latter. The pulp _per se_ has been occasionally imported, but it should never be employed when the legumes for preparing it can be obtained.

=Substitutes=—The pods of some other species of _Cassia_ share the structure above described and have been sometimes imported.

[863] Thus there were imported into Leghorn in 1871, 103 tons of _Cassia Fistula_ and Tamarinds.—_Consular Reports_, 1873,