MR. D. HANBURY ON RADIX GALANG.E. 23 
were paid for at the rate of 6s. 8d. The other entries indicate the 
price as from 1s. 6d. to 3s. per lb. 
In the fifteenth century galangal was evidently in common use ; 
for Saladinus, physician to one of the Princes of Tarentum, circa 
A.D. 1442-1458, reckons it among the things necessaria et usitata 
which should be found in the shop of every aromatarius *. As 
might be expected, it is included in all the older pharmacopceias 
and antidotaria. 
Garcia D'Orta, first physician to the Portuguese Viceroy of 
India at Goa, and a resident in India for thirty years, is, I think, 
the first writer to point out (1563) that there are two sorts of 
galangal—the one, as he says, of smaller size and more potent 
virtues brought from China, the other a thicker and less aromatic 
rhizome produced in Java f. 
This distinction is perfectly correct. The Greater Galangal, 
which is termed Radix galange majoris, is yielded by Alpinia Ga- 
langa, Willd., a plant of Java t; the lesser, called Radix galange 
minoris or simply Radix galange, is derived, as we now know, 
from the plant which Dr. Hance has described as A. officinarum. 
It is the latter drug alone that is at present found in European 
commerce §. 
The name galangal, galanga or garingal, Galgant in German, is 
derived from the Arabic khalanján ; whether that word may be a 
corruption of the Chinese name liang-kiang, signifying mild ginger, 
I must leave it to others to decide. 
Let me say a few words regarding the uses of galangal. Asa 
medicine, the manifold virtues formerly ascribed to it must be ig- 
nored ; the drug is an aromatic stimulant, and might take the place 
of ginger, as indeed it does in some countries. That it is still in use 
in Europe is evident from the exports from China and from the 
considerable parcels offered in the publie drug sales of London ||. 
* ‘Compendium Aromatariorum,’ Bonon. 1488, fol. 
t *Colloquios dos Simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India,' Goa, 1563, 
Colloquio 24. 
i Maranta Galanga, Linn., Sp. Pl. and Swartz, Obs. Bot. 
$ Moodeen Sheriff, in his learned ‘Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India’ 
(Madras, 1869), states that in the bazars of Hyderabad and in some other parts 
of India the rhizome of Alpinia calcarata, Rosc., is sold as a sort of galangal ; 
and that a species of Alpinia growing in gardens about Madras, which, conceiv- 
ing it to be new to science, he has described and named as 4. Khulinjan, has a 
rhizome much resembling the Lesser Galangal of China. 
l| Three hundred bags, each 112 lbs., imported from Whampoa were offered 
