part 17

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It is common in most parts of India and Burma, where it is highly valued for its wood, which is used for posts and for various domestic purposes, as well as for making catechu and charcoal, while the astringent bark serves for tanning. It also grows in the hotter and drier parts of Ceylon. _A. Catechu_ abounds in the forests of Tropical Eastern Africa; it is found in the Soudan, Sennaar, Abyssinia, the Noer country, and Mozambique, but in none of these regions is any astringent extract manufactured from its wood.

2. _A. Suma_ Kurz[924] (_Mimosa Suma_ Roxb.), a large tree with a red heartwood, but a white bark, nearly related to the preceding but not having so extensive a geographical range. It grows in the South of India (Mysore), Bengal and Gujerat. The bark is used in tanning, and catechu is made from the heartwood.

The extract of the wood of these two species of _Acacia_ is _Catechu_ in the true and original sense of the word, a substance not to be confounded with _Gambier_, which, though very similar in composition, is widely diverse in botanical origin, and always regarded in commerce as a distinct article.

=History=—Barbosa in his description of the East Indies in 1514[925] mentions a drug called _Cacho_ as an article of export from Cambay to Malacca. This is the name for _Catechu_ in some of the languages of Southern India.[926]

About fifty years later, Garcia de Orta gave a particular account of the same drug[927] under its Hindustani name of _Kat_, first describing the tree and then the method of preparing an extract from its wood. This latter substance was at that period made up with the flour of a cereal (_Eleusine coracana_ Gärtn.) into tablets or lozenges, and apparently not sold in its simple state: compositions of this kind are still met with in India. In the time of Garcia de Orta the drug was an important article of traffic to Malacca and China, as well as to Arabia and Persia.

Notwithstanding these accounts, catechu remained unknown in Europe until the 17th century, when it began to be brought from Japan, or at least said to be exported from that country. It was known about 1641 to Johannes Schröder,[928] and is quoted at nearly the same time in several tariffs of German towns, being included in the samples of mineral origin.[929]

[924] Brandis, _Forest Flora of North-Western and Central India_, Lond. 1874. 187, from which excellent work we also borrow the description of _A. Catechu._

[925] Published by the Hakluyt Society, Lond. 1866. p. 191.

[926] As Tamil and Canarese, in which according to modern spelling the word is written _Káshu_ or _Káchu_.—Moodeen Sheriff, _Suppl. to Pharmacopœia of India_, 1879. 96.

[927] _Aromatum Historia_, ed. Clusius, 1574. 44.—He writes the word _Cate_.

[928] _Pharmacopœia medico-physica_, Ulmæ, 1649. lib. iii. 516. “Est et genus terræ exoticæ, colore purpureum, punctulis albis intertextum, ac si situm contraxisset, sapore austeriusculum, masticatum liquescens, subdulcemque post se relinquens saporem, _Catechu_ vocant, seu _Terram japonicam_.... Particulam hujus obtinui a Pharmacopœo nostrate curiosissimo Dn. Matthia Bansa.” The preface is dated Frankfurt A.D. 1641.

[929] _Pharm. Journ._ vi. (1876) 1022.

In 1671, catechu was noticed as a useful medicine by G. W. Wedel of Jena,[930] who also called attention to the diversity of opinion as to its mineral or vegetable nature. Schröck[931] in 1677 combated the notion of its mineral origin, and gave reasons for considering it a vegetable substance. A few years later, Cleyer,[932] who had a personal knowledge of China, pointed out the enormous consumption of catechu for mastication in the East,—that it is imported into Japan,—that the best comes from Pegu, but some also from Surat, Malabar, Bengal, and Ceylon.

Catechu was received into the London Pharmacopœia of 1721, but was even then placed among “_Terræ medicamentosæ_.”

The wholesale price in London in 1776 was £16 16_s._ per cwt.; in 1780 £20; in 1793 £14 14_s._, from which it is easy to infer that the consumption could only have been very small.[933]

=Manufacture=—Cutch, commonly called in India _Kát_ or _Kut_, is an aqueous extract made from the wood of the tree. The process for preparing it varies slightly in different districts.

The tree is reckoned to be of proper age when its trunk is about a foot in diameter. It is then cut down, and the whole of the woody part, with the exception of the smaller branches and the bark, is chopped into chips. Some accounts state that only the darker heartwood is thus used. The chips are then placed with water in earthen jars, a series of which is arranged over a mud-built fireplace, usually in the open air. Here the water is made to boil, the liquor as it becomes thick and strong being decanted into another vessel, in which the evaporation is continued until the extract is sufficiently inspissated, when it is poured into moulds made of clay, or of leaves pinned together in the shape of cups, or in some districts on to a mat covered with the ashes of cow-dung, the drying in each case being completed by exposure to the sun and air. The product is a dark brown extract, which is the usual form in which cutch is known in Europe.

In Kumaon in the north of India,[934] a slight modification of the process affords a drug of very different appearance. Instead of evaporating the decoction to the condition of an extract, the inspissation is stopped at a certain point and the liquor allowed to cool, “coagulate,” and crystallize over twigs and leaves thrown into the pots for the purpose. How this drug is finished off we do not exactly know, but we are told that by this process there is obtained from each pot about 2 lb. of “_Kath_” or catechu, of an ashy whitish appearance, which is quite in accordance with the specimens we have received and of which we shall speak further on.

In Burma the manufacture and export of cutch form, next to the sale of timber, the most important item of forest revenue. According to a report by the Commissioner of the Prome Division, the trade returns of 1869-70 show that the quantity of cutch exported from the province during the year was 10,782 tons, valued at £193,602, of which nearly one-half was the produce of manufactories situated in the British territory. Vast quantities of the wood are consumed as fuel, especially for the steamers on the Irrawadi.[935]

[930] _Usus novus Catechu seu Terræ Japonicæ,—Ephemerides Nat. Cur._ Dec. i. ann. 2 (1671) 209.

[931] _Ibid._ Dec. i. ann. 8 (1677) 88.

[932] _Ibid._ Dec. ii. ann. 4 (1685) 6.

[933] Pegu Cutch is quoted in a London price current, March 1879, £1. 2_s._ per cwt.

[934] Madden in _Journ. of Asiat. Soc. of Bengal_, xvii.