SEMEN ARECÆ.

Botanical Origin—Areca Catechu L., a most elegant palm,[2500] with a straight smooth trunk, 40 to 50 feet high and about 20 inches in circumference. The inflorescence is arranged on a branching spadix, with the male flowers on its upper portion and the female near its base. The tree is cultivated in the Malayan Archipelago, the warmer parts of the Indian Peninsula, Ceylon, Indo-China and the Phillippines. It is probably indigenous to the first-named region.

History—The Areca palm is mentioned in the Sanskrit writings as Guvāca. It is called in Chinese Pin-lang, a name apparently derived from Pinang, a designation for the tree in the Malay Islands, whence the Chinese anciently derived their supply of the seeds. The oldest Chinese work to mention the pin-lang is the San-fu-huang-tu, a description of Chang-an, the capital of the Emperor Wu-ti, b.c. 140-86. It is there stated that after the conquest of Yunnan, b.c. 111, some remarkable trees and plants of the south were taken to the capital, and among them more than 100 pin-lang, which were planted in the imperial gardens. Bretschneider,[2501] to whose researches we are indebted for this information, cites several other Chinese works, from the first century downwards, showing that areca nuts were brought from the then unsubdued provinces of Southern China, the Malayan Archipelago and India. The custom of presenting areca nut to a guest is alluded to in a work of the 4th century.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.