Some further remarks on the economical and medical uses of the oil commonly called croupee on the Gold Coast, touloucouna at the Gambia and Senegal, and kundah at Sierra Leone / by Robert Clarke.

  • Clarke, Robert
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some further remarks on the economical and medical uses of the oil commonly called croupee on the Gold Coast, touloucouna at the Gambia and Senegal, and kundah at Sierra Leone / by Robert Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the Phabmaoeoticai. Journal /or Mat, I860.] SOME FUETHER REMARKS ON THE ECONOMICAL AND MEDI- CAL USES OF THE OIL COMMONLY CALLED CROUPEE ON THE GOLD COAST, TOULOUCOUNA AT THE GAMBIA AND SENEGAL, AND KUNDAH AT SIERRA LEONE. BY BOBEET CLAJtKE, ESQ., COLONIAL SDKGEON, GOLD COAST, The tree -wUch produces the seeds from which Croupee oil is made is a I Meliaceous plant, the Carapa Toulouconna of the Flore de Sanegaml/ia.* It i flowers in January and the early part of February, and ripens in March or April, when the fruit is gathered, and shortly after the manufacture of the oil is com- ; menced. The fruit, a large, somewhat globular five-celled capsule, contains in each cell eighteen to thirty seeds, varying in size from a chestnut to a small hen's egg. They are three-cornered, convex on the dorsal surface, of a brownish or blackish red colour, and rugous. On the Gold Coast the tree grows abundantly i in Assin, Tueful, Dinkarra, and Western Wassaw, the Brafi Country, Essi- ! coomah, Akim, and Aquapim, and in several of the other districts of the pro- i tected territory. Strictly speaking, it might be extensively grown over large tracts of land, both at Sierra Leone arid the Gold Coast, which are at present a wilderness of jungle ; the land under cultivation bearing so small a proportion to that lying waste, and which prevails to such an extent, that the former is the exception and the latter the rule. In the vicinity of Freetown, and the villages ; and hamlets of the former colony, and in the suburbs of Cape Coast, and forts on the seaboard of the latter settlements, nearly all the magnificent forest trees have been cleared away, the ground being covered with copsewood, densely matted by climbing plants. Everywhere aunost in these luxuriant copsewoods the Carapa forms part of them, and is readily distinguished by the rich reddish- brown colour of the bunch of soft leaves which adorn the points of the upper branches, attracting the notice of the most casual observer by the beautifully variegated appearance imparted to the darker leaved brushwood around them. Its presence also is a sure indication of the fertility of the soil on which it grows. At present. Cape Coast market is chiefly supplied with Croupee oil from Assin, Accra obtaining its supplies from Akim, and Aquapim. Small quantities are brought to Wimebah from Essicoomah, the other regions before named furnish- ing enough of it for home use. The manufacture of Croupee oil is conducted by the natives much in the same way as they make palm oil. In Assin the seeds are dried for a short time, they are then boiled, and the oil skimmed ofl as it rises to the surface. The boUing IS done in large clay pots made in the country, which are ingeniously ranged upon furnaces built of clay; large quantities of the seeds being boiled in them With little trouble and small expense, fuel being abundantly at hand in the rural districts of the country, which is not the case in some of the Coast towns, where |, .y fofnior paper on Touloucouna oil, which appeared in vol. ii., page 841, of t\\6Pharma • ^l^*cal Journal, the carapa tree, it wa.s .stated, would be found figured in Sweet's Britiih ' louitr Garden; but this is not the ciso, as I had an opportunity of ascertaining through the KindnaM of Mr Bennett, of the BotMical Department, British Museum.—B. C.