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:: 1879

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 the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$Choulant died in A.D. 923 or 932, mentions Mamiran, and it is also noticed by Avicenna a little later as a drug useful in diseases of the eye. Mafxrjpd likewise occurs in exactly the same way in the writings of Leo, Philosophus et Medicus.1 Ibn Bay tar called the drug Mamiran and Uruk, and described it as a small }7ellow root like turmeric, coming from China. Other writers of the middle ages allude to it under the name of Memer-en. Hajji Mahomed, in the account of Cathay which he gave to Ramusio (circa A.D. 1550) saj^s that the Mambroni chini, by which we understand the root in question, is found in the mountains of Succuir (Suh-cheu) where rhubarb grows, and that it is a wonderful remedy for diseases of the eye.2 In an official report published at Lahore in 1862,3 Mamiran-i-chini is said to be brought from China to Yarkand. The rhizome of Goptis is used by the Chinese under the names Hwang-lien and Chuen-lien.4 It is enumerated by Cleyer5 (1682) as radix pretiosa amara, and was described in 1778 by Bergius 6 who received it from Canton. More recently it was the subject of an interesting notice by Gui- bourt7 who thought it to be derived from Ophioxylon serpentinum L., an apocyneous plant widely removed from Coptis. Its root was recom- mended in India by Maclsaac8 in 1827 and has been subsequently employed with success by many practitioners. There is a rude figure of the plant in the Chinese herbal Pun-tsdo. Description—Tita, as the drug is called in the Mishmi country, whence it is sent by way of Sudiya on the Bramaputra to Bengal, is a rhizome about the thickness of a quill occurring in pieces an inch or two in length. It often branches at the crown into two or three beads, and bears the remains of leafstalks and thin wiry rootlets, the stumps of which latter give it a rough and spiny appearance. It is nearly cylindrical, often contorted, and of a yellowish brown colour. The fracture is short, exhibiting a loose structure, with large bright yellow radiating woody bundles. The rhizome is intensely bitter, but not aromatic even when fresh. It is found in the Indian bazaars in neat little open-work bags formed of narrow strips of rattan, each containing about half an ounce. We have once seen it in bulk in the London market.10 Microscopic Structure—Cut transversely the rhizome exhibits an inner cortical tissue, through which sclerenchymatous groups of cells are scattered. The latter are most obvious on account of their bright yellow colour. In the woody central column a somewhat concentric 1F. Z. Ermerins, Anecdota medica Graeca, e codicibus MSS. expromsit. Lugd. Bat. J 840. Leonis Pkilosoplii ct Medici conspectus medieinae, lib. iii. cap. ]. (K ><•/'.». Hepl 6<f>Qa\fi£>v capKOKoWiji, KpoKov, yAavKtoj. fxuu.ii pa ;.«i u<t/i'l>(>i>(t). 2 Yule, Catliay <ut<l tin- way thither, (Hakluyt Society) i. (1866) p. ccxvi. ■: Davies, Report an the trade of the coun- tries an tin- JN. IT. boundary of India, Lahore, 1862. 4 Otherwise written Honglane, Chonlin, flhynlen, Ohouline, Souline, &c. ;' S/H'cimen Ifedicinos Sinica, Med. Simp. No. 27. •'' Mat. Mr,/, ii. (1778) <)0S. ' Ifi.st. ,/,'s Drog. ii. (1849) 526. s '/'roils, of Mril. am/ Phys. SoC, of Cal- cutta, iii. (1827) 432. 0 Teeta is the Hindustani titii, from the. Sanskrit tikta, bitter. (Dr. Eice.) ' Two cases were offered for sale as Olen or Mishmee by Messrs. Gray and (Jlark, drug-brokers, 22th Nov. 1858.$