part i

. chap. xii. xiv.

_Beech Tar_—Tar is also manufactured from the wood of the beech, _Fagus silvatica_ L., and has a place in some pharmacopœias as the best source of creasote.

_Birch Tar_—is made to a small extent in Russia, where it is called _Dagget_, from the wood of _Betula alba_ L. It contains an abundance of pyrocatechin, and is esteemed on account of its peculiar odour well known in the Russia leather. A purified oil of birch tar is sold by the Leipzig distillers.

PIX NIGRA.

_Pix sicca vel solida vel navalis_; _Pitch_, _Black Pitch_; F. _Poix noire_; G. _Schiffspech_, _Schusterpech_, _Schwarzes Pech_.

=Botanical Origin=—see _Pix liquida_.

=Production=—When the crude products of the dry distillation of pine wood, as described in the previous article, are submitted to re-distillation, the following results are obtained. The first 10 to 15 per cent. of volatile matter consists chiefly of methylic alcohol and acetone. A higher temperature causes the vaporization of the acetic acid, while the still retains the tar. This last, subjected to a further distillation, may be separated into a liquid portion called _Oil of Tar_ (_Oleum Picis liquidæ_), and a residuum which, on cooling, hardens and forms the product under notice, namely _Black Pitch_. Again heated to a very elevated temperature, it is capable of yielding paraffin, anthracene and naphthalene.

=Description=—Pitch is an opaque-looking, black substance, breaking with a shining conchoidal fracture, the fragments showing at the thin translucent edges a brownish colour. No trace of distinct crystallization is observable when very thin fragments are examined, even by polarized light. Pitch has a peculiar disagreeable odour, rather different from that of tar. Its alcoholic solution has a feeble taste somewhat like that of tar, but pitch itself when masticated is almost tasteless. It softens by the warmth of the hand, and may then be kneaded. It readily dissolves in those liquids which are solvents of tar. Alcohol of 75 per cent. acts freely on it, leaving behind in small proportion a dark viscid residue. The brown solution reddens litmus paper, and yields a dingy brownish precipitate with perchloride of iron, and whitish precipitates with alcoholic solution of neutral acetate of lead, or with pure water. Pitch dissolves in solution of caustic potash, evolving an offensive odour.

=Chemical Composition=—From the method in which pitch is prepared, we may infer that it contains some of the less volatile and less crystallizable compounds found in tar. Ekstrand (1875) extracted from it _Retene_, C₁₈H₁₈, a colourless, inodorous crystalline substance, melting at 90° C.

The pitch of beech-wood boiled with a caustic alkali, yields a fœtid volatile oil; when this solution is acidulated, fatty volatile acids are evolved. These principles however have not yet been isolated either from the pitch of pine or beech. The whitish compound formed by acetate of lead in an alcoholic solution of pitch deserves investigation, and perhaps might be the starting point for acquiring a better knowledge of the chemistry of this substance.

=Commerce=—The same countries that produce tar produce also pitch. The quantity of the latter imported into the United Kingdom during 1872 was 35,482 cwt., four-fifths of which were supplied by Russia. Pitch is also manufactured from tar in Great Britain.

=Uses=—Pitch is occasionally administered in the form of pills, or externally as an ointment; but its medicinal properties are, to say the least, very questionable.

FRUCTUS JUNIPERI.

_Baccæ Galbuli Juniperi_; _Juniper Berries_; F. _Baies de Genièvre_; G. _Wacholderbeeren_, _Kaddigbeeren_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Juniperis communis_ L., a diœcious evergreen, occurring in Europe from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions, throughout Russian Asia as far as Sachalin, and in the north-western Himalaya, where it is ascending in Kashmir at 5400 feet, in Lahoul to 12,500, on the upper Biās and in Gurhwal to 14,000 feet. It abounds in the islands of Newfoundland, Saint Pierre, and Miquelon, and is also found in Continental North America. Dispersed over this vast area the Common Juniper presents several varieties. In England and in the greater part of Europe it forms a bushy shrub from 2 to 6 feet high, but in the interior of Norway and Sweden it becomes a small forest tree of 30 to 36 feet, often attaining an age of hundreds of years.[2319] In high mountain regions of temperate Europe and in Arctic countries it assumes a decumbent habit (_Juniperus nana_ Willd.), rising only a few inches above the soil.

=History=—The fruits of Juniper, though by no means exclusively those of _J. communis_, were commonly used in medicine by the Greek and Roman as well as by the Arabian physicians; they had a place among the drugs of the Welsh “physicians of Myddvai” (see Appendix), and are mentioned in some of the earliest printed herbals. The oil was distilled by Schnellenberg[2320] as early as 1546.

Popular uses were formerly assigned in various parts of Europe to Juniper berries. They were employed as a spice to food;[2321] and a spirit, of which wormwood was an ingredient, was obtained from them by fermentation and distillation. The spirit called in French _Genièvre_ became known in English as _Geneva_, a name subsequently contracted into _Gin_.[2322]

[2319] Schübeler, _Culturpflanzen Norwegens_, Christiania, 1873-1875. 140, with fig.

[2320] _Artsneybuch_, Königsberg, 1556. 35.

[2321] Valmont de Bomare, _Dict. d’Hist. nat._ ii. (1775) 45.

[2322] The gin distilled in Holland is flavoured with Juniper berries, yet, as we are told, but very slightly, only 2 lb. being used to 100 gallons.

=Description=—The flowers form minute axillary catkins; those of the female plant consist of 3 to 5 whorls of imbricated bracts. Of these the uppermost three soon become fleshy and scale-like, and alternate with three upright ovules having an open pore at the apex. After the flowers have faded these three fleshy bracts grow together to form a berry-like fruit termed a _galbulus_, which encloses three seeds. The three points and sutures of the fruit-scales are conspicuous in the upper part of the young fruit; but after maturity the sutures alone are visible, forming a depressed mark at its summit. A small point, surrounded by two or three trios of minute bracts, indicates the base of the fruit.

This fruit or pseudo-berry remains ovate and green during its first year, and it is not until the second autumn that it becomes ripe. It is then spherical, ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch in diameter, of a deep purplish colour, with a blue-grey bloom. Its internal structure may be thus described:—beneath the thin epicarp there is a loose yellowish-brown sarcocarp, enclosing large cavities, the oil-ducts; the three hard seeds lying close together, triangular and sharp-edged at the top, are attached to the sarcocarp at their outer sides, and only as far as the lower half. The upper half, which is free, is covered by a thin membrane. In the longitudinal furrows of the hard testa towards the lower half of the seed are small prominent sacs growing out into the sarcocarp. Each seed bears on its inner side 1 or 2, and on its convex outer surface 4 to 8 of these sacs, which in old fruits contain the resinified oil in an amorphous colourless state.

Juniper berries when crushed have an aromatic odour, and a spicy, sweetish, terebinthinous taste.

=Microscopic Structure=—The outer layer of the fruit consists of a colourless transparent cuticle, which covers a few rows of large cubic or tabular cells having thick, brown, porous walls. These cells contain a dark granular substance and masses of resin. The sarcocarp, which in the ripe state consists of large, elliptic, thin-walled, loosely coherent cells, contains chlorophyll, drops of essential oil, and a crystalline substance soluble in alcohol,—no doubt a stearoptene. Before maturity it likewise contains starch granules and large oil-cells. This tissue is traversed by very small vascular bundles containing annulated and dotted vessels.

=Chemical Composition=—The most important constituent of juniper berries is the volatile oil, obtainable to the extent of 0·4 to 1·2 per cent. The latter amount is obtained from Hungarian, 0·7 per cent. from German fruits.[2323] It is a mixture of levogyre oils, the one of which having the composition C₁₀H₁₆ boils at 155° C.; the prevailing portion of the oil, boiling at about 200°, consists of hydrocarbons, which are polymeric with terpene, C₁₀H₁₆. The crude oil as distilled by us deviated 3°·5 to the left in a column of 50 mm.

[2323] According to Messrs. Schimmel & Co. (see p. 306, note 2.)

By passing nitrosyl chloride gas, NOCl, into it, Tilden (1877) obtained from the portion boiling below 160° the crystallized compound C₁₀H₁₆(NOCl), which is yielded by all the terpenes.

Another important constituent of juniper berries is the glucose, of which Trommsdorff (1822) obtained 33 per cent., while Donath (1873) found 41·9, and Ritthausen (1877) not more than 16 per cent. in the berries deprived of water. Of albuminoid substances about 5 per cent. are present, of inorganic matters 3 to 4 per cent. The fruit, moreover, contains also according to Donath small amounts of formic, acetic, and malic acids, besides resin.

=Collection and Commerce=—Juniper berries are largely collected in Savoy, and in the departments of the Doubs and Jura in France, whence they find their way to the hands of the Geneva druggists. They are also gathered in Austria, the South of France and Italy. In Hamburg price-currents they are quoted as _German_ and _Italian_. The largest supplies are apparently furnished by Hungaria.

=Uses=—The berries and the essential oil obtained from them are reputed diuretic, yet are not often prescribed in English medicine.

HERBA SABINÆ.

_Cacumina vel Summitates Sabinæ_; _Savin or Savine_; F. _Sabine_; G. _Sevenkraut_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Juniperus Sabina_ L., a woody evergreen shrub, usually of small size and low-growing, spreading habit, but in some localities erect and arborescent.

It occurs in the Southern Alps of Austria (Tirol) and Switzerland (Visp or Viège and Stalden in the Valais, also in Grisons and Vaud), and in the adjacent mountains of France and Piedmont, ascending to elevations of 4,000 to 5,000 feet. It is also found in the Pyrenees, Central Spain, Italy and the Crimea; likewise in the Caucasus, where it reaches 12,000 feet above the sea-level. Eastward it extends to the Elburs range, south of the Caspian, and throughout Southern Siberia, where it ascends in the Balkhasch and Alatau mountains to 8,600 feet. In North America it has been gathered on the banks of the river Saskatchewan, at Lake Huron, in Newfoundland, and in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There are, however, a few very closely allied species which may occasionally have been confounded with savin.

=History=—Savin is mentioned as a veterinary drug by Marcus Porcius Cato,[2324] a Roman writer on husbandry who flourished in the second century B.C.; and it was well known to Dioscorides (under the name of βρἀθυ) and Pliny. The plant, which is frequently named in the early English leech-books written before the Norman Conquest,[2325] may probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. Charlemagne, A.D. 812, ordered that it should be cultivated on the imperial farms of Central Europe. Its virtues as a stimulating application to wounds and ulcers are noticed in the verses of Macer Floridus,[2326] composed in the 10th century.

=Description=—The medicinal part of savin is the young and tender green shoots, stripped from the more woody twigs and branches. These are clothed with minute scale-like rhomboid leaves, arranged alternately in opposite pairs. On the younger twigs they are closely adpressed, thick, concave, rounded on the back, in the middle of which is a conspicuous depressed oil gland. As the shoots grow older the leaves become more pointed and divergent from the stem. Savin evolves, when rubbed or bruised, a strong and not disagreeable odour. The blackish fruit or _galbulus_ resembling a small berry, ²/₁₀ of an inch in diameter, grows on a short recurved stalk, and is covered with a blue bloom. It is globular, dry, but abounding in essential oil, and contains 1 to 4 little bony nuts.

To mycologists, _Juniperus Sabina_, at least in the cultivated state, is interesting on account of the parasitic fungus _Podisoma fuscum_ Duby, the mycelium of which produces, on the leaves of the pear-trees, the so-called _Roestelia cancellata_ Rebentisch.

=Chemistry=—The odour of savin is due to an essential oil, of which the fresh tops afford 2 to 4 per cent., and the berries about 10 per cent. Examined in a column 50 millimetres long it was found to deviate the ray of polarized light 27° to the right, the oil used having been distilled by one of us in London from the fresh plant cultivated at Mitcham. The same result was obtained from the oil abstracted ten years previously from savin collected wild on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. We find that, by the prolonged action of the air, if the oil is kept in a vessel not carefully closed, the rotatory power after the lapse of years is greatly reduced. Savin oil, according to Tilden (1877), yields a small amount of an oil boiling at 160°, which answers to the formula C₁₀H₁₆O. The greater part of the oil was found by that chemist to boil above 200° C. Tilden asserts that no terpene is present in the oil of savin; we have not been able to obtain from it a crystallized hydrochloride. Savin tops contain traces of tannic matter.

[2324] Cap. lxx. (_Bubus medicamentum_).

[2325] Cockayne, _Leechdoms, etc., of Early England_, ii. (1865) xii.

[2326] Choulant, _Macer Floridus de viribus herbarum_, Lipsiæ, 1832. 48.... “Duplum si desunt _cinnama_ poni in medicamentis iubet _Oribasius_ auctor.”

=Uses=—Savin is a powerful uterine stimulant, producing in overdoses very serious effects. It is but rarely administered internally. An ointment of savin, which from the chlorophyll it contains is of a fine green colour, is used as a stimulating dressing for blisters.

=Substitutes=—There are several species of juniper which have a considerable resemblance to savin; and one of them, commonly grown in gardens and shrubberies, is sometimes mistaken for it. This is _Juniperus virginiana_ L., the _Red Cedar_ or _Savin_ of North America. In its native country it is a tree, attaining a height of 50 feet or more, but in Britain it is seldom more than a large shrub, of loose spreading growth, very different from the low, compact habit of savin.[2327] The foliage is of two sorts, consisting either of minute, scale-like, rhomboid leaves like those of savin, more rarely of elongated, sharp, divergent leaves a quarter of an inch in length, resembling those of common Juniper. Both forms often occur on the same branch. The plant is much less rich in essential oil than true savin,[2328] for which it is sometimes substituted in the United States.

The foliage of _Juniperus phœnicea_ L., a Mediterranean species, has some resemblance to savin for which it is said to be sometimes substituted,[2329] but it is quite destitute of the peculiar odour of the latter. The specific name of the former alludes to its _red_ fruit, from ϕοινίκιος, purple.

[2327] We have examined numerous herbarium specimens (wild) of _J. virginiana_ and _J. Sabina_, but except difference of stature and habit, can observe scarcely any characters for separating them as species. The fruit-stalk in _J. virginiana_ is often pendulous as in _J. Sabina_. Each plant has two forms,—arboreous and fruticose.

[2328] This we ascertained by distilling under precisely similar conditions 6 lbs. 6 oz. of the fresh shoots of each of the two plants, _Juniperus Sabina_ and _J. virginiana_: the first gave 9 drachms of essential oil, the second only ½ a drachm. The latter was of a distinct and more feeble odour, and a different dextrogyre power. In America the oil of _J. virginiana_ is known as “_Cedar Oil_,” and used as a taenifuge. It contains a crystallizable oxygenated portion. This oil however is afforded by the wood. Red Cedar wood from Florida is stated by Messrs. Schimmel & Co. (see p. 306) to afford as much as 4 to 5 per cent. of that oil.

[2329] _Bonplandia_, x. (1862) 55.

_Monocotyledons._

CANNACEÆ.

AMYLUM MARANTÆ.

_Arrowroot._

=Botanical Origin=—_Maranta arundinacea_[2330] L.—An herbaceous branching plant, 4 to 6 feet high, with ovate-lanceolate, puberulous or nearly glabrous leaves, and small white flowers, solitary or in lax racemes. It is a native of the tropical parts of America from Mexico to Brazil, and of the West Indian Islands; and under the slightly different form known as _M. indica_ Tussac, it occurs in Bengal, Java and the Philippines. This Asiatic variety is now found in the West Indies and Tropical America, but apparently as an introduced plant.[2331]

=History=—The history of arrowroot is comparatively recent. Passing over some early references of French writers on the West Indies to an _Herbe aux flèches_, which plant it is impossible to identify with _Maranta_, we find in Sloane’s catalogue of Jamaica plants (1696), _Canna Indica radice alba alexipharmaca_. This plant, discovered in Dominica, was sent thence to Barbadoes and subsequently to Jamaica, it being, says Sloane, “_very much esteemed for its alexipharmack qualities_.” It was observed, he adds, that the native Indians used the root of the plant with success against the poison of their arrows, “_by only mashing and applying it to the poison’d wounds_”: and further, that it cures the poison of the manchineel (_Hippomane Mancinella_ L.), of the wasps of Guadaloupe, and even stops “_a begun gangreen_.”[2332]

[2330] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen’s _Med. Plants_,