Volume 1

Pharmacographia indica : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in British India / by William Dymock, C.J.H. Warden and David Hooper.

Date:: 1890-1893

Credit: Pharmacographia indica : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in British India / by William Dymock, C.J.H. Warden and David Hooper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

615/624 page 597

$their appearance. On applying more warmth after the water is evaporated, all the substances unite into a transparent, dark brown, thick liquid, which exhibits no crystalline structure on cooling, or only after a very long time. Among the fragments of the bark occurring in the crude resin, liber fibres are fre- quently observable. Chemical composition.—E. Simon (1839) obtained from this balsam styrol, cinnatnic acid, styracin, and two resins. In addition to these, W. von Miller (1876-77) found a little ben- zoic acid, cinnamic ethyl, and a fragrant compound melting at 65° C, probably ethyl vanillin; in larger proportion were found the alcohol storesin in two modifications—the cinnamic ether of this alcohol and cinnamate of phenylpropyl. Styrol or cinnamene has the composition C8H8, and is obtained by distilling storax with water. The yield is very variable. It is a colourless, thin liquid, very refractive to light, and of a very fragrant odour and burning taste. It has been artificially obtained by heating acetylene gas, and from ethyl-benzol bro- mide by heating it with baryta. Its specific gravity is 0-924, and it boils at 146° 0.; but when heated to 200° 0. it is rapidly converted into a polymeric compound, metacinnamene, which is a colourless, amorphous, tough solid of the specific gravity ] -054, insoluble in alcohol and ether, and reconverted into styrol when distilled. Cinnamic acid may be obtained by treating storax with a solution of sodium carbonate and pre- cipitating the acid by means of hydrochloric acid. The ethers are obtained from storax previously deprived of cinnamic acid by treating it with hot petroleum benzin, on the cooling of which white or colourless needles are deposited which require repeated treatment with hot benzin. Styracin molts at 38° C, and after prolonged heating congeals to a transparent mass, in which crystals are formed very slowly. It is styryl {cinnamyl) cinnamate, C9H9C9H7027, and when in alcoholic solution treated with caustic soda, or when heated with an aqueous solution of soda, is converted into cinnamate of sodium and cinnam-alcohol, also known as styryl alcohol and styron C9H'°0. This crystallizes in colourless silky needles, has an$