Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury.

  • Friedrich August Flückiger
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    234/736 (page 208)
    Turning to the Greeks, we find that Theophrastus in the 3rd and 4th century b.c. mentioned Ko/jl/ju as a product of the Egyptian’'Aicavda, of which tree there was a forest in the Thebais, of Upper Egypt. Strabo also, in describing the district of Arsinoe, the modern Fayfim, says that gum is got from the forest of the Thebaic akanthe. Celsus in the 1st century mentions Gummi acanthinum ; Dioscorides and Pliny also desci’ibe Egyptian gum, which the latter values at 3 denarii [2s.] per lb. Gum was employed by the Arabian physicians and by those of the school of Salerno, yet its utility in medicine was but little appreciated, and its value in the arts quite ignored until a much later period. During the middle ages, the small supplies that reached Europe were procured through the Italian traders, from Egypt and Turkey. Thus Pegolotti1 who wrote a work on commerce about a.d. 1340, speaks of gum arabic as one of the drugs sold at Constantinople by the pound, not by the quintal. Again in a list of drugs liable to duty at Pisa in 1305,2 and in a similar list relating to Paris in 1349,3 we find mention of gum arabic, It is likewise named by Pasi,4 in 1521, as an export'from Venice to London. Gum also reached Europe from Western Africa, with which regioix the Portuguese had a direct trade as early as 1449. Production—Respecting the origin of gum in the tribe Acaciece, no observations have been made similar to those of H. von Mohl on trasa- canth. It appears that gum generally exudes from the ti’ees spontaneously, in sufficient abundance to render wounding the bark superfluous. The Somali tribes of East Africa however, are in the habit of promoting the oxxtflow by making long incisions in the stem and branches of the tree.5 In Kordofan the lumps of gum are broken off with an axe, and collected in baskets. The most valued product called Hashabi gum, from the province of Dejara in Kordofan, is sent northward from Bara and El Obeid to Dabbeh on the Nile, and thence down the river to Egypt; or it reaches the White Nile at Mandjara. A less valuable gum known as Hashabi el Jesire, comes from Sennaar on the Blue Nile; and a still worse from the barren table-land of Takka, lying between the eastern tributaries of the Blue Nile and the Atbara and Mareb; and from the highlands of the Bisharrin Arabs between Khartum and the Red Sea. This gum is transported by way of Khartum or El Meklieir (Berber), or by Suakin on the Red Sea. Hence, the worst kind of gum is known in Egypt as Samagh Savakumi (Suakin . Gum). According to Munzinger, a better sort of gum is produced along the Samhara coast towards Berbera, and is shipped at Massowa. Some of it reaches Egypt by way of Jidda, which town being in the district of Arabia called the Hejaz, the gum thence brought receives the name of Samagh Hejazi; it is also called Jiddali or Gedda Gum. The gums of 1 Della Decima e di varie allre gravezze imposte dal commune di Firenze, iii. (1766) 18. 2 Bonaini, Statuti inediti della cittd di Pisa, Firenze, iii. (1857) 106. 114. s Ordonnanccs de Rois de France, ii. (1729) 318. 4 Tariffa de pesi c misurc, - Venet. 1521. 204. 5 Vaughan (Drugs of Aden), Pharm. Journ. xii. (1853) 226.