The cinchona barks : pharmacognostically considered / by Friedrich A. Flückiger ; translated from the original text, with some additional notes, by Frederick B. Power.

  • Flückiger, Friedrich A. (Friedrich August), 1828-1894.
Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cinchona barks : pharmacognostically considered / by Friedrich A. Flückiger ; translated from the original text, with some additional notes, by Frederick B. Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cinnamon color, ancl frequently finely sprinkled with white, in con- sequence of the cells of the medullary rays, which contain oxalate. A transverse section shows directly beneath the outer bark a so- called resin ring. A species belonging in this category, namely, the bark of Cin- chona nitida Ruiz et Pavon, which is designated as Pata de gallina- zo, affords an excellent example of the fantastic names with which the Cascarilleros provide the Cinchona Barks. In consequence of thecorky warts (lenticels?), asalsoof the Sphseriacese, whicharefound upon this bark as well as upon many others, there is formed a pe- culiar delineation of the outer surface, which in Peru is designated as “vulture claws,” pata de gallinazo. Gallinazo refers in Lima to the carrion vulture, Cathartes foetens.1 Such names are now best cleared away by the innovation of the Dutch Government, which consists in attaching to the larger packages of Javanese barks the results of the analysis and the Resignation of the mother piant. In former times the Huänuco variety consisted chiefly of barks of the Cinchona nitida,2 which grows in large amounts by San Cristoval de Cuchero or Cocheros, not far from Huänuco. The barks of this district were made known since 1776, by Francisco Renquifo and Manuel Alcarraz, and then by Ruiz, Pavon and Dom- bey,3 and finally toward the endof the Century introduced into com- merce by merchants from Lima, as gray bark of Huänuco. As Loxa or Loja Cinchona, barks are or were exported, which, in distinction to the preceding variety, are predominatingly of a dark brownish color, have a more gray than whitish coating, and, be- side longitudinal wrinkles, exhibit numerous, somewhat distant, transveise fissures. The Loxa bark consists mostly of quills having a maximum circumference of 1 centimeter (3j inch), and only 1 to 2 millimeters (24- to A inch) in diameter, and is frequently abundantly beset with lichens. A sharp transverse section of the better sorts of Loxa bark exhibits the glistening “resin rino-.” As has been previously mentioned (p 19), the district of Loxa furnished the first Cinchona barks. At the time of the Spanish sovereignty the most select specimens of the same, a yellowish and a reddish variety, Cascarilla amarilla del Key and Cascarilla colorada del Rey, were retained for the Spanish Court, and bore for in AMar^hQ?' Pfltch^t,:- Bllte Book 1863, 120, 125. I was told, however, by Mr Spruce in Au0ust 1867, that the expression Pata de gallinazo refers to the fractureof thebark 2 Figure in Weddell, T. io; Howard, N. Quino/ogia, T. 20. ’ JpfPh Dombey was born in the year 1742, at Mäcon, and went to Peru with Ruiz ÄfE. &«««, II (1864); compare also my Pharm. Chemie, pp. 6, 890.