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.

  • Flückiger, Friedrich A. (Friedrich August), 1828-1894.
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 The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    48/732 (page 24)
    Collection—As to the collection and preparation of the drug for I the market, the only account we possess is that obtained by Dr. Berry,^ 1 which states that the roots are dug up in the month of Marcli, which is 1 the dry season, cut into slices and dried in the shade. Description—The calumba plant produces great fusiform fleshy roots growing several together from a short head. Some fresh speci- mens sent to one of us (H.) from the Botanic Garden, Mauritius, in 18G6, and others from that of Trinidad in 18G8, were portions of cylindrical roots, 3 to 4 inches in diameter, externally rough and brown, and internally firm, fleshy, and of a brilliant yellow. When sliced transversely, and dried by a gentle heat, these roots exactly resemble imported calumba except for being much fresher and brighter. The calumba of commerce consists of irregular flattish pieces of a circular or oval outline, 1 to 2 inches or more in diameter, and \ to \ an inch thick. In drying, the central portion contracts more than the ; exterior: hence the pieces are thinnest in the middle. The outer edge i is invested with a brown wrinkled layer which covers a corky bark ' about f of an inch thick, surrounding a pithless internal substance, from which it is separated by a fine dark shaded line. The pieces are 'light and of a corky texture, easily breaking with a mealy fracture. Their , colour is a dull greenish yellow, brighter when the outer surface is i shaved off with a knife.^ The drug has a weak musty odour and a \ rather nauseous bitter taste. It often arrives much perforated by in- , sects, but seems not liable to such depredations here. i Microscopic Structure—On a transverse section the root exhibits a circle of radiate vascular bundles only in the layer immediately con- nected with the cambial zone; they project much less distinctly into the cortical part. The tissue of the whole root, except the cork and vascular bundles, is made up of large parenchymatous cells. In the outer part of the bark, some of them have their yellow walls thickened and are loaded with fine crystals of oxalate of calcium, whilst all the other cells contain very large starch granules, attaining as much as 90 mkm. The short fracture of the root is due to the absence of a proper ligneous or liber tissue. Chemical Composition—The bitter taste of calumba, and probably likewise its medicinal properties, are due to three distinct substances, Columhin, Berberine, and Columhic Acid. ColuviUn or Columba-BUtei' was discovered by Wittstock in 1830. It is a neutral bitter principle, crystallizing in colourless rhombic prisms, slightly soluble in cold alcohol or ether, but dissolving more freely in those liquids when boiling. It is soluble in aqueous alkaKs and in acetic acid. The presence of Bcrherine in calumba was ascertained in 1848 by Bodeker, who showed that the yellow cell-walls of the root owe their colour to it and (as we may add) to ColumUc Acid, another substance discovered by the same chemist in the following year. Columhic acid is yellow, amorphous, nearly insoluble in cold water, but dissolving in alcohol and in alkaline solutions. It tastes somewhat less bitter than 1 Asiatick Researches, x. (1808) 385 ; ^ Wholesale druggists sometimes wash Ainslie, Mat. Med. of Hindoostan, 298. the drug to improvx} its colour.