been supposed to be the bark of the magnolia glauca; but, with more probability, it has been since thought to be that of the brucea antidysenterica'; or brucea ferruginea of L'Heritier and Aiton +: for the description of the bark of this tree, given by Mr. Bruce, agrees very well with the cortex angustura; and as far as can be judged by the bark of a living plant of this species, now growing in the Royal Garden at Kew, this opinion is still further confirmed. During the last twelve years, in which the angustura bark has been known as a medicine in this country, it has been successfully used in the characters of a febrifuge, tonic, and astringent. In intermit tents it has been found equally effectual as Peruvian bark, and generally more acceptable to the stomach; and in cases of diarrhea, dyspepsia, scrophula, and great debility, it has been found to be an useful remedy +. [Humboldt. Bruce. Miller. Woodville. Powell. SECTION IX. Canella. Canella alba.-WOODY. THE stem of this tree rises very straight, from ten to fifty feet in height, and branched only at the top; it is covered with a whitish bark, by which it is easily distinguished at a distance from other trees in the woods where it grows: the leaves are placed upon short footstalks, and stand alternately: they are oblong, obtuse, entire, of a dark shining green hue, and thick like those of the laurel : the flowers are small, seldom opening, of a violet colour, and grow in clusters at the tops of the branches upon divided footstalks: the calyx is monophyllus, divided nearly to its base into three lobes, which are roundish, concave, incumbent, green, smooth, membra. nous, and persistent: the corolla is composed of five petals, which are much longer than the calyx, sessile, oblong, concave, erect, and two of them are somewhat narrower than the other three: the nectary is pitcher-shaped, of the length of the petals, and supports the antheræ instead of filaments, which are wanting: the antheræ * See Bruce's Travels, &c. vol. v. p. 69, and J. F. Miller, tab. 25. + Hort. Kew. iii. 397. See Brande, in London Med, Journal for 1790. are twenty-one, linear, parallel, distinct, single-valved, and fixed longitudinally to the nectary: the germen is ovate, placed above the insertion of the corolla, and supports a cylindrical style, furnished with two obtuse rough convex stigmata: the fruit is an oblong berry, containing four kidney-shaped seeds of unequal size *. It appears a little surprising, that the canella, which is a native of the West Indies, and of which figures have been given by Plakenet, Sloane, Catesby, Browne, and others, should have been generally confounded with the tree which produces the cortex winteranus : even the younger Linnæus, who describes this tree under the genus Winterania, from a specimen in the herbarium of Montin, has acknowledged that he could not discover how far it differed from the Drimys or Wintera of Murray. The well known specimen † which was given by Dr. Swartz, to the Linnæau Society, accompanied with a botanical history of the tree, must, we should think, remove every doubt con. cerning the true characters of canella alba; and by comparing Woodville's plate with that published of the wintera aromatica, in the fifth volume of Medical Observations and Inquiries by Drs. Fother. gill and Solander, it may be observed how far the tree, which produces the cortex winteranus, differs from that of our plant, the bark of which is the officinal canella alba. The latter appears from Clusius to have been first introduced into Britain about the year 1600; the former was known in England twenty years before, and took its name from William Winter, captain of one of the ships which accompanied Sir Francis Drake to the Straits of Magellan, from whence he brought this bark to Europe in 1579. John Bauhin appears to be the first who confounded the names of these barks, by styling the cortex winteranus, Canella alba; and as Sir Hans "The whole tree (according to Dr. Swartz) is very aromatic, and when in blossom perfumes the whole neighbourhood. The flowers dried, and softened again in warm water, have a fragrant odour, nearly approaching to that of musk. The leaves have a strong smell of laurel. The berries, after having been some time green, turn blue, and become at last of a black glossy colour, and have a faint aromatic taste and smell. They are, when ripe, as well as the fruit of several kinds of laurel, very agreeable to the white-bellied and baldpate pigeons, (Columba Jamaicensis & leucocephala), which feeding greedily upon them, acquire that peculiar flavour so much admired in the places where they are found. + See Woodville, vol. ii. p. 319. Sloane, who has given a separate description of both trees, and was sensible of a difference in the taste of their barks, seems to insinuate that this might depend upon the place of growth, his remarks did not wholly remove the error. Professor Murray, in his fourteenth edition of the Systema Vege tabilium, was the first who made a distinct genus of canella, and thus corrected the mistake of Linnæus, who, disregarding the evidence of the old botanists, combined two genera under the name of Laurus winteraua; but he afterwards made it a separate genus, and called it Winterania, a name by which it has been long universally, though improperly, distinguished. Mr. Aiton, who has followed Murray in considering the canella, as differing generically from the tree named after Winter, informs us, that it was cultivated by Mr. Philip Miller at Chelsea, in 1739. The officinal canella alba is the bark of the branches of this tree, freed from its outward covering, and dried in the shade. It is brought to Europe in long quills, which are about three quarters of an inch in diameter, somewhat thicker than cinnamon, and both externally and internally of a whitish or light brown colour, with a yellowish hue, and commonly intermixed with thicker pieces, which are probably obtained from the trunk of the tree. This bark in taste is moderately warm, aromatic, and bitterish; its smell is agreeable, and resembles that of cloves. Its virtues are extracted most perfectly by proof spirit. "In distillation with water it yields an essential oil of a dark yellowish colour, of a thick tenacious consistence, difficultly separable from the aqueous fluid, in smell suf ficiently grateful, though rather less so than the bark itself: the remaining decoction, inspissated, leaves an extract of great bitterness, in consistence not uniform, seemingly composed of a resinous and gummy matter, imperfectly mixed. On inspissating the spiri tuous tincture, the spirit which distils has no great smell or taste of the canella, but is so far impregnated with its more volatile oil, as to turn milky on the admixture of water: the remaining extract retains the bitterness of the bark, but has little more of its warmth or flavour than the extract made with water." The use of canella alba now supersedes that of the old bark of Winter, on the authority of both the London and Edinburgh pharmacopoeias. It has been supposed to possess a considerable share of medicinal power, and is said to be an useful medicine in the scurvy, and some other complaints; but it is now considered merely in the character of an aromatic, and like many of the spices is chiefly employed for the purpose of correcting and rendering less disagreeable the more powerful and nauseous drugs. It is therefore an ingredient in the aloetic powder of the London college, and in the bitter tincture, bitter wine, &c. of the Edinburgh dispensatory. Swartz tells us, that "this bark, together with the fruit of capsicum, was formerly a common ingredient in the food and drink of the Caribs, the ancient natives of the Antilles; and even at present it makes a necessary addition to the meagre pot of the negroes." The Wintera aromatica, or Winter's bark, was formerly employed for the medical purposes of the canella of the present day, and was by many botanists, confounded with it. This last is a very large tree, often rising to the height of fifty feet. It is a native of the Streights of Magellan and Terra del Fuego. Dr. Solander relates that "the tree which produces the Winter's bark was utterly unknown to the Europeans till the return of Captain John Winter, who, in the year 1577, sailed with Sir Francis Drake, as commander of a ship called the Elizabeth, destined for the South Seas; but immediately after they had got through the Streights of Magellan, Captain Winter, on the 8th of October, was obliged, by stress of weather, to part company, and to go back again into the Streights, from whence he returned into Eng. land in June 1579, and brought with him several pieces of this aromatic bark, which Clusius called after him Cortex Winteranus. Se. veral authors have mentioned it since in their botanical works; but all they have said has been copied from Clusius. No more was heard of this bark till the Dutch fleet, under Admiral Van Nort, returned from the Sireights of Magellan, in the year 1600. Afterwards all the navigators who passed through the Streights of Magellan took notice of the tree, on account of the usefulness of its bark but none furnished any description that could make it botanically known before Mr. George Handasyd came back from the Streights of Magellan in 1691, and brought with him some dried specimens, which he gave to Sir Hans Sloane, and are now preserved in the British Museum. From these specimens, and the account Mr. Handysyd gave of this tree, Sir Haus Sloane drew up a history, and gave a figure in the Philosophical Transactions. Still the systematical botanists could not give it a place in their catalogues, being unacquainted with its flowers and fruit." However this loss was supplied by the industry of Mr. Wallis, captain of the Dolphin who returned from the South Seas in 1768, bringing with him several botanical specimens of the Winter's bark-tree, one of which came into the possession of Dr. John Fothergill, who caused an engraving of it to be made by Ehret, which is published, together with its botanical description written by Dr. Solander, in the fifth volume of the Medical Observations aud Inquiries. [Murray. Aiton. Miller. Woodville. SECTION X. Myrrh. Mimosa Troglodyte.- BRUCE. BOTANY, even medical botany, is still in a very imperfect state, notwithstanding all the pains that have been taken during the last half century, more especially to obtain accuracy. The two or three last sections have offered us proofs of this to a certain extent : and the material before us is still more in point; for at this hour we are totally ignorant of the tree that produces it. This tree we have called, indeed, a Mimosa, upon the authority of Bruce, who regards it as a co-species of the Acacia vera, which is unquestionably a species of mimosa *. His history and description of this ancient and elegant gum-resin is as follows. "The ancients, and especially Dioscorides, spoke of myrrh in such a manner as to make us suppose, either that they have described a drug which they had never seen; or that the drug seen and described by them is absolutely unknown to modern naturalists and physicians. The Arabs, however, who form the link of the chain between the Greek physicians and ours, in whose country the myrrh was produced, and whose language gave it its name, have left us undeniable evidence, that what we know by the name of myrth, is in nothing different from the myrrh of the ancients, grow. ing in the same countries from which it was brought formerly to Greece; that is, from the east coast of Arabia Felix, bordering on the Indian Ocean, and that low land in Abyssinia on the south-east of the Red Sea, included nearly between the 12th and 13th degree *See chapter vii. sect, article Gum Arabic, Mimosa Nilotica." |