252 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



it used to be. It is said that kino is now 

 largely used in "doctoring" port wine; but 

 whether that be true or not, medical men who 

 are in the habit of prescribing kino (the only 

 official preparations into which the drug enters 

 are pulvis catechu compositus, pulvis kino 

 compositus, and tinctura kino) would feel 

 thankful that there is again a prospect of a 

 regular and satisfactory supply of the article, 

 to the employment of which there is onlj' one 

 obstacle — viz., that the supply, though of ex- 

 cellent quality, is not at present official. 



It is a singular circumstance that, in return- 

 ing to the new, or rather the revived African 

 kino, of which three or four consignments have 

 been received in London within the past half 

 year, we should only be going back to the 

 original kino of European therapy, the gum mi 

 rubrum astringens Gambiense of Dr. Fothergill. 

 For although the new supplies of African kino 

 come from British Central Africa, and are col- 

 lected on the borders of the Zambesi and some 

 of its tributaries, it is certain that in them we 

 have to deal with the same drug which was in- 

 troduced into European materia medica by Dr. 

 Fothergill in 1757,* and which for some un- 

 known reason was superseded shortly after- 

 wards by the produce of Plerocarpus mar- 

 supiunt Roxb., the beula— or bia — tree of the 

 Malabar coast, and to a less degree by that of 

 Butea frondosa, the dhak — or pulas — tree of 

 Northwestern India. This first kino of Euro- 

 pean materia medica, therefore, received from 

 its sponsor the name of gummi rubrum astrin- 

 gens Gambiense. There appears to be no evi- 

 dence that Dr. Fothergill was aware that the 

 same drug had been described by one Francis 

 Moore, a factor in the service of the Royal 

 African Company, a quarter of a century 

 earlier. t Moore relates that the natives of the 

 Gambia district knew the tree yielding the drug 

 as "kano." but he himself confounded it with 

 dragon's blood, a mistake which was also made 

 by Mungo Park (who likewise referred to the 

 tree), in spite of the fact that the celebrated 

 traveller was himself a medical man. The 

 mistake is easily accounted for by the circum- 

 stance that the Portuguese traders in the Man- 

 dingo country knew the "kano tree" as Pao de 

 sangre, or blood tree. The derivation of our 

 word kino, however, is not so easily accounted 

 for. It is true that it is closely akin to kano, 

 but, as mentioned above, the "kano" gum was 

 introduced by Dr. Fothergill under a Latin 

 name, and it appears to have been supplanted 



* Med. Obs. and Eiig. I., 358. 



t Travels into the inland parts of Africa. London, 1737 



not long after its introduction by the two East 

 Indian varieties of kino. It is generally held 

 that our name for the drug is derived from the 

 word kuenee or kini (Sanscrit, kin-suka), which 

 is given by the natives of India to the exuda- 

 tion from the bark of Butea frondosa. X It is 

 certainly a singular coincidence that the 

 natives of Western Africa and those of North- 

 west India should have used almost identical 

 words in describing closely allied therapeutical 

 agents employed by them for the same purpose. 

 As early as 1774 kino appeared in the Edin- 

 burgh Pharmacopoeia as "gummi kino"; 

 Lewis's "Materia Medica" of 1784 and the 

 London Pharmacopoeia of 1787 knew it as 

 "resina kino"; but Dr. Fothergill's rather 

 clumsy denomination, "gummi rubrum astrin- 

 gent Gambiense," appears to have lingered 

 among our druggists until well into the present 

 century. 



Besides the African and Indian kinos there 

 have at various times been imported into Eu- 

 rope substances closely resembling these in ap- 

 pearance, and to some extent in astringent 

 properties. The most note-worthy of these 

 substances are Jamaican, or West Indian kino, 

 a dried aqueous extract, not an inspissated 

 juice, from Coccoloba uvifera Jacq. and Austra- 

 lian or Botany Bay kino, from various varieties 

 of eucalypts (natural order Myrtaces). The 

 former is mentioned by Duncan in the Edin- 

 burgh Dispenaary (1803) as scarcely distinguish- 

 able from African kino, and in the 1811 edition 

 of the same work Duncan states that the Afri- 

 can variety has been quite superseded by the 

 product from Jamacia, of Botany Bay, and of 

 the Malabar coast. Amboyna-kino, which is 

 also mentioned occasionally in text- books, was 

 probably obtained from Pterocarpiis indicus 

 (sono or bingoa-wood), a native of the Malay- 

 sian Archipelago. 



Among these rival products the Malabar kino 

 speedily gained the upper hand, and gradually 

 obtained official recognition in many pharma- 

 copoeias, although the kino from Butea frondoso 

 is official in the Pharmacopoeia of India as 

 buteae gummi vel kino Bengalensis. The African 

 kino, which has now once more made its ap- 

 pearance in commerce, is gathered under the 

 supervision of a trained European botanist and 

 is imported mto this country by an African 

 trading company located in Scotland. The 

 manner in which it is obtained gives some 



X Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society, May 24th, 



1838. 



