OF MADRAS.
89
two pints; boil on a slow fire till the liquid is reduced to one pint,
and strain when cool.
D oses.—Of the resin, from one to three drachms; and of the
decoction, from two to four fluid ounces; three or four times in the
twenty-four hours.
European Drugs for which they may be substituted.— The resin for
copaiba, benzoin, geranin and ulmus; and the bark for calumba and
quassia.
Remarks.—There are three varieties of the resin of A. mal abar i ca,
which, for the sake of convenience, may be called the first or soft, the
second or flat, and the third or hard. The resin of the first variety is
collected in bamboo-joints, one of which I have received from the
Annamullay forests in the Coimbatore district, through the kindness of
Messrs. H. J. A. Porter and G. Homfray of the Forest Department.
This variety is never found in the bazaar of Madras or any other place,
as far as my knowledge extends, but is occasionally supplied by special
request to exhibitions and to medical men requiring to examine or use
it, by the Forest Department of this Presidency. When new, the resin
in this variety is grey, very soft, viscid, plastic, opaque, and bears a
great resemblance in its appearance to the birdlime prepared from the
milky juice of Ficus glomerata. It retains its grey color internally for
a long time, but every part of it which comes in contact with the
atmosphere becomes reddish-brown in a few hours and then deep-brown.
The resin has an agreeable aromatic or balsamic odor, and though it
is not soluble in saliva, it produces a terebinthinate taste in the mouth
when chewed. The resin is neither soluble nor miscible in cold or hot
water, it is, however, miscible with the aid of rubbing and grinding
in alcohol, ether and many fixed and essential oils, as cocoanut, olive,
turpentine, cajuput, anise, &c. After the lapse of some months, the
resin, if exposed to the air, becomes much harder and feels as tough as
wax; and after a few months more, it is as hard as a stick. The second
or flat variety (No. l58) is extremely rare and occurs in flat and
circular pieces, varying in diameter from two to three inches, and in
thickness from ¼t o ½ i n c h . T h e p i e c e s a r e m o r e o r l e s s s o f t l i k e
wax, rough, cracked, dark-brown in color, and similar to the resin
in the first variety in all other characters.
The third or hard variety (No. 159), which is by far the most
common, occurs in small balls generally about the size of a small orange.
The balls are very hard, smooth, dark-brown in color both externally
and internally, and possess the same kind of smell and taste, but in a
much slighter degree. It contains a great deal of impurities (about
80 per cent.), as earth, sand, fragments of wood, &c., upon which its
hardness chiefly depends.
Through the kindness of the same gentlemen, whose names I have
mentioned above, and to whom I feel very thankful, I have obtained
a supply of the bark of A. malabarica from the same place, namely,
the Annamullay forests. I owe my thanks also to Raisul Islam Sahib,
the Hospital Assistant of the 2nd M.N.I., for another supply of it from
Quilon. The latter has also furnished me with some leaves of the
plant from which he removed the bark, and they are correctly those of
A. malabarica. The pieces of the bark from the Annamullay forests
are about 1 foot long, from 4 to 6 inches broad, and from ¾ to 1 inch
M