ascends in the Balkhasch and Alatau mountains to 8,600 feet. In North America it has been gathered on the banks of the river Saskatchewan, at Lake Huron, in Newfoundland, and in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There are, however, a few very closely allied species which may occasionally have been confounded with savin. History Savin is mentioned as a veterinary drug by Marcus Porcius Cato, a Roman writer on husbandry who flourished in the second century B.C.; and it was well known to Dioscorides (under the name of Bodou) and Pliny. The plant, which is frequently named in the early English leech-books written before the Norman Conquest," may probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. Charlemagne, A.D. 812, ordered that it should be cultivated on the imperial farms of Central Europe. Its virtues as a stimulating application to wounds and ulcers are noticed in the verses of Macer Floridus, composed in the 10th century. Description-The medicinal part of savin is the young and tender green shoots, stripped from the more woody twigs and branches. These are clothed with minute scale-like rhomboid leaves, arranged alternately in opposite pairs. On the younger twigs they are closely adpressed, thick, concave, rounded on the back, in the middle of which is a conspicuous depressed oil gland. As the shoots grow older the leaves become more pointed and divergent from the stem. Savin evolves, when rubbed or bruised, a strong and not disagreeable odour. The blackish fruit or galbulus resembling a small berry, of an inch in diameter, grows on a short recurved stalk, and is covered with a blue bloom. It is globular, dry, but abounding in essential oil, and contains 1 to 4 little bony nuts. To mycologists, Juniperus Sabina, at least in the cultivated state, is interesting on account of the parasitic fungus Podisoma fuscum Duby, the mycelium of which produces, on the leaves of the pear-trees, the so-called Roestelia cancellata Rebentisch. Chemistry-The odour of savin is due to an essential oil, of which the fresh tops afford 2 to 4 per cent., and the berries about 10 per cent. Examined in a column 50 millimetres long it was found to deviate the ray of polarized light 27° to the right, the oil used having been distilled by one of us in London from the fresh plant cultivated at Mitcham. The same result was obtained from the oil abstracted ten years previously from savin collected wild on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. We find that, by the prolonged action of the air, if the oil is kept in a vessel not carefully closed, the rotatory power after the lapse of years is greatly reduced. Savin oil, according to Tilden (1877), yields a small amount of an oil boiling at 160°, which answers to the formula CHO. The greater part of the oil was found by that chemist to boil above 200° C. Tilden asserts that no terpene is present in the oil of savin; we have not been able to obtain from it a crystallized hydrochloride. Savin tops contain traces of tannic matter. 1 Cap. lxx. (Bubus medicamentum). Cockayne, Leechdoms, etc., of Early England, ii. (1865) xii. 3 Choulant, Macer Floridus de viribus herbarum, Lipsiæ, 1832. 48. "Dup. lum si desunt cinnama poni In medicamentis iubet Oribasius auctor." Uses-Savin is a powerful uterine stimulant, producing in overdoses very serious effects. It is but rarely administered internally. An ointment of savin, which from the chlorophyll it contains is of a fine green colour, is used as a stimulating dressing for blisters. Substitutes—There are several species of juniper which have a considerable resemblance to savin; and one of them, commonly grown in gardens and shrubberies, is sometimes mistaken for it. This is Juniperus virginiana L., the Red Cedar or Savin of North America. In its native country it is a tree, attaining a height of 50 feet or more, but in Britain it is seldom more than a large shrub, of loose spreading growth, very different from the low, compact habit of savin.1 The foliage is of two sorts, consisting either of minute, scale-like, rhomboid leaves like those of savin, more rarely of elongated, sharp, divergent leaves a quarter of an inch in length, resembling those of common Juniper. Both forms often occur on the same branch. The plant is much less rich in essential oil than true savin,2 for which it is sometimes substituted in the United States. The foliage of Juniperus phonicea L., a Mediterranean species, has some resemblance to savin for which it is said to be sometimes substituted, but it is quite destitute of the peculiar odour of the latter. The specific name of the former alludes to its red fruit, from poivíkios, purple. 1 We have examined numerous herbarium specimens (wild) of J. virginiana and J. Sabina, but except difference of stature and habit, can observe scarcely any characters for separating them as species. The fruit stalk in J. virginiana is often pendulous as in J. Sabina. Each plant has two forms, arboreous and fruticose. 2 This we ascertained by distilling under precisely similar conditions 6 lbs. 6 oz. of the fresh shoots of each of the two plants, Juniperus Sabina and J. virginiana: the first gave 9 drachms of essential oil, the second only a drachm. The latter was 3 Bonplandia, x. (1862) 55. This Red racemes. Botanical Origin-Maranta arundinacea,' L.-An herbaceous branching plant, 4 to 6 feet high, with ovate lanceolate, puberulous or nearly glabrous leaves, and small white flowers, solitary or in lax It is a native of the tropical parts of America from Mexico to Brazil, and of the West Indian Islands; and under the slightly different form known as M. indica Tussac, it occurs in Bengal, Java and the Philippines. This Asiatic variety is now found in the West Indies and Tropical America, but apparently as an introduced plant.2 History The history of arrowroot is comparatively recent. Passing over some early references of French writers on the West Indies to an Herbe aux flèches, which plant it is impossible to identify with Maranta, we find in Sloane's catalogue of Jamaica plants (1696), Canna Indica radice alba alexipharmaca. This plant, discovered in Dominica, was sent thence to Barbadoes and subsequently to Jamaica, it being, says Sloane, "very much esteemed for its alexipharmack qualities." It was observed, he adds, that the native Indians used the root of the plant with success against the poison of their arrows, "by only mashing and applying it to the poison'd wounds": and further, that it cures the poison of the manchineel (Hippomane Mancinella L.), of the wasps of Guadaloupe, and even stops "a begun gangreen." 23 Patrick Browne (1756) notices the reputed alexipharmic virtues of Maranta, which was then cultivated in many gardens in Jamaica, and 1 Fig. in Bentley and Trimen's Med. Plants, part 23 (1877). 2 We accept the opinion of Körnicke (Monographia Marantaccarum Prodromus, Bull. de la Soc. imp. des Naturalistes de Moscou, xxxv. 1862, i.) that Maranta arundinacea L. and M. indica Tuss. are one and the same species. Grisebach maintains them as distinct (Flora of the British West Indian Islands, 1864, 605), allowing both to be natives of Tropical America; but he fails to point out any important character by which they may be distinguished from each other. According to Miquel (Linnæa, xviii. 1844. 71) the plant in the herbarium of Linnæus labelled M. arundinacea, is M. indica. We have ourselves made arrowroot from the fresh rhizomes of M. arundinacea, in order to compare it with an authentic specimen obtained in Java from M. indica: no difference could be found between them. 3 Sloane, Catal. plant. quæ in ins. Jamaica sponte proveniunt, vel vulgò coluntur, Lond. 1696. 122; also Hist. of Jamaica, i. (1707) 253. says that the root "washed, pounded fine and bleached, makes a fine flour and starch,”—sometimes used as food when provisions are scarce.' Hughes, when writing of Barbadoes in 1750, describes arrowroot as a very useful plant, the juice mixed with water and drunk being regarded as "a preservative against any poison of an hot nature"; while from the root the finest starch is made, far excelling that of wheat. The properties of Maranta arundinacea as a counter-poison are insisted upon at some length by Lunan, who concludes his notice of the plant by detailing the process for extracting starch from the rhizome. Arrowroot came into use in England about the commencement of the present century, the supplies being obtained, as it would appear, from Jamaica.1 The statements of Sloane, which are confirmed by Browne and Lunan, plainly indicate the origin and meaning of the word arrowroot, and disprove the notion of the learned C. F. Ph. von Martius (1867) that the name is derived from that of the Arnac or Aroaquis Indians of South America, who call the finest sort of fecula they obtain from the Mandioc Aru-aru. It is true that Maranta arundinacea is known at the present day in Brazil as Araruta, but the name is certainly a corruption of the English word arrowroot, the plant according to general report having been introduced." Manufacture-For the production of arrowroot, the rhizomes are dug up after the plant has attained its complete maturity, which in Georgia is at the beginning of winter. The scales which cover them are removed and the rhizomes washed; the latter are then ground in a mill, and the pulp is washed on sieves, or in washing machines constructed for the purpose, in order to remove from it the starch. This is allowed to settle down in pure water, is then drained and finally dried with a gentle heat. Instead of being crushed in a mill, the rhizomes are sometimes grated to a pulp by a rasping machine. In all stages of the process for making arrowroot, nice precautions have to be taken to avoid contamination with dust, iron mould, insects, or anything which can impart colour or taste to the product. The rhizome contains about 68 per cent. of water, and yields about a fifth of its weight of starch." Description-Arrowroot is a brilliant white, insipid, inodorous, powder, more or less aggregated into lumps which seldom exceed a pea in size; when pressed it emits a slight crackling sound. It exhibits the general properties of starch, consisting entirely of granules which are subspherical, or broadly and irregularly egg-shaped; when seen in water they show a distinct stratification in the form of fine concentric rings around a small star-like hilum. They have a diameter of 5 to 7 mkm. when observed in the air or under benzol. If the water in which they 1 Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, 1756. 112. 113. 2 Natural History of Barbados, 1750. 221. 3 Hortus Jamaicensis, i. (1814) 30. 4 Thus in 1799 there were exported from Jamaica 24 casks and boxes of "Indian Arrow-root."-Renny, Hist. of Jamaica,235. 5 Since the above was written, the following lines bearing on this question have been received from Mr. Spruce:--“. . I know not Martius' derivation of arrowroot.' On the Amazon it is called 'ararúta'-plainly a corruption of the English name, and explained by the fact that it was first culti vated, as I was told, from tubers obtained in the East Indies." This was in the German colony of Blumenau in Southern Brazil-Eberhard, Arch, der Pharm. 134 (1868) 257. lie be cautiously heated on the object-stage of the microscope, the tumefaction of the granules will be found to begin exactly at 70° C. Heated to 100° C. with 20 parts of distilled water, arrowroot yields a semitransparent jelly of somewhat earthy taste and smell. By hydrochloric acid of sp. gr. 106, arrowroot is but imperfectly dissolved at 40° C. The specific gravity of all varieties of starch is affected by the water which they retain at the ordinary temperature of the air. Arrowroot after prolonged exposure to an atmosphere of average moisture, and then kept at 100° C. till its weight was constant, was found to have lost 13.3 per cent. of water. On subsequent exposure to the air, it regained its former proportion of water. Weighed in any liquid which is entirely devoid of action on starch, as petroleum or benzol, the sp. gr. of arrowroot was found by one of us to be 1-504; but 1:565 when the powder had been previously dried at 100° C. Microscopic Structure of Arrowroot and of Starch in general. -The granules are built up of layers, a structure which may be rendered evident by the gradual action of chloride of calcium, chromic acid, or an ammoniacal solution of cupric oxide. When one of these liquids in a proper state of dilution is made to act upon starch, or when for that purpose a liquid is chosen which does not act upon it energetically, such as diastase, bile, pepsin, or saliva, it is easy to obtain a residue, which according to Nägeli, is no longer capable of swelling up in boiling water, nor is immediately turned blue by iodine, except on the addition of sulphuric acid; but which is dissolved by ammoniacal cupric oxide. These are the essential properties of cellulose; and this residue has been regarded as such by Nägeli, while the dissolved portion has been distinguished as Granulose (Maschke, 1852). C. Nägeli in his important monograph on starch has described the action of saliva when digested with starch for a day, at a temperature of 40° to 47° C.; he says that the residue is a skeleton, corresponding in form to the original grain but somewhat smaller, light, and very mobile in water. He concludes that its interstitial spaces must have been previously filled with granulose. This experiment, which has been repeated by one of us (F.), does not in our opinion warrant all the inferences that Nägeli has drawn from it: it is true that many separate parts of the grain are dissolved by the saliva, while others have disappeared down to a mere film, and others again have been attacked in a very irregular manner. But we cannot agree with the statement that anything comparable to a skeleton of the grain has been left. After longer action at a higher temperature, which however must not exceed 65° C., a more copious dissolution of the starch, either by saliva or by bile, takes place; but in no case is it complete.2 Chemistry of Starch-Its composition answers to the formula (CHO)+3 OH, or when dried at 100° C., CHO". Musculus however showed, in 1861, that by the action of dilute acids or of Diastase, 1 Die Stärkekörner, Zürich, 1858. 4°, also W. Nägeli, Stärkegruppe, etc., Leipzig, 1874. 2 Further particulars on this question may be found in my paper Ueber Stärke und Cellulose-Archiv der Pharmacie, 196 (1871) 7.-F. A. F. |