Catalogue of the vegetable production of the Presidency of Bombay : including a list of the drugs sold in bazars of western India / compiled by G.C.M. Birdwood.

Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Catalogue of the vegetable production of the Presidency of Bombay : including a list of the drugs sold in bazars of western India / compiled by G.C.M. Birdwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    416/518 (page 366)
    Remarks. The fruit under the name of Rita is used for washing the hair, the pulp round the seed being saponaceous, whence its generic name, quasi sqpo indicus. S. Sajvmaria, W, Common Soap-berry (Bacca Ber- mudensis) of the West Indies is better known in Europe, where the seeds were formerly imported for waistcoat buttons. In America the fruit is used for washing, as is the fruit of other species of this genus elsewhere. There are several other saponaceous plants. In Jamaica soap is prepared from the leaves of Agave vivipera, and in Mexico the roots of Agave sapo- naria are used for soap, N. O. 242 ; the fruit of Bromelia Penguin, N. O. '241, is also used for washing in the West Indies ; and the bark of Quillaja Saponaria, N. O. 76, in Chili. Quillaja brasilensis has the same property. In India the pods of Acacia concinna, De C. Sicahai, N. O. 74, are also commonly used, and in Europe different species of Gypsophila and Saponaria, N. 0. 28. Caryophyllaccoe. I have also in the Museum a saponaceous leguminous fruit from China, which as yet 1 have not been able to identify. In Japan a mucilage is prepared from the branches of Kadsitra japonica by boiling them, and this is used by the women to cleanse (heir hair of the pomatum they so largely employ. (Lindley.) Under N. 0. 22. Polygalacere the root bark of Monnina poli/stitchi/a and Polygala salicifolia pounded and made into balls are used in Peru for soap. The women of Egypt wash their hair with the leaves of Halophylium tuberculatum, N. 0. G3. Rutacece. In India besides the Snap-berry, and the pod of Acacia concinna (vide infra), the seeds of Entada Purseetha, No. 72 (vide infra), are also sometimes used for washing the hair. The juice of the leaves of llernandia sonora, N. 0. 185, applied to the hair removes il without pain or injury of any kind. The ancients were not familiar with the use of soap except as a sort of pomade, and used instead a number of substances from the mineral, vegetable, and even animal kingdom. The best of these substitutes among minerals were Nil run or l/itron, and Konia ; the former probably carbonate •of soda, and the latter a lye of potash ; and amongst vegetables the plant called arpovBitiv by the Greeks, and Radicula, and Herba lanaria, by the Romans, and identified by some with the Gypsophila Struthium of botanists, and by others with their Saponaria officinalis, both Cloveworts. Less legitimate, but probably more used, substitutes were ointments and other preparations of all kinds of odoriferous gums and resins, roots, woods, and herbs. These were frequently carried about the person in little caskets called alabastra from their being often made of alabaster. In the passages of the Bible :—The Lord will take away the tablets, and it shall come to pass that instead of a sweet smell there shall be a stink ; and,— ' All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad:—the words tablets and ivory palaces refer to perfume cases. The word soap in the English versions of the Bible is the equivalent of the Hebrew word borith which is supposed to refer to the same plant as the arpvBiov of the Greeks, Pliny uses the very word sapo for soap, and a soapboiler's shop, with the sua]) still fresh, has been discovered amongst the excavations of Pompeii. 3GG