272 



HAMAMELIDEiE. 



century) as signifying Liquid Storax. This and other Arabian physicians 



were also familiar with the same substance under the name of Mik 



{may a), and also knew how and whence it was obtained.^ 



A curious account of the collecting of Liquid Storax from the tree 



Zygia, and from another tree called Stourika, is given in the travels 



through Asia Minor to Palestine of the Russian abbot of Tver in a.d. 

 1113-1115.2 



The wide exportation and ancient use of Liquid Storax are verj- 

 remarkable : even in the first century, as appears by the author of the 

 Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, Storax, by which term there can be but 

 little doubt Liquid Storax was intended, was exported by the Ked Sea 

 to India. Whether the Storax and Storax Isaurica offered to the Church 

 of Rome under St. Silvester, A.D. 314-335, by the emperor Constantine,' 

 was Liquid Storax or the more precious resin of Siyrax officinalis L., 

 is a point we cannot determine, That the Chinese used the drug 

 was a fact known to Garcia de Orta (1535-03): Bretschneider* has 

 shown from Chinese sources that, together with olibanum and mp-rh, it 

 was imported by the Arabs into China during the Ming dynasty, A.D. 

 1368-1628. This trade is still carried on : the drug is conveyed by vay 

 of the Red Sea to Bombay, and thence shipped to China. Official 

 returns show that the quantity thus exported from Bombay in the year 

 1856-57 was 13,328 lb. In the time of Kampfer (1690-92), L^d 

 Storax was one of the most profitable articles of shipment to Japan. 



Liquid Storax is known in the East, at least in the price-currents and 

 trade statistics of Europeans, by the strange-sounding name of riof 

 Malloes {Rosa Mallas, Rosum Alloes, Rosmal), a designation for itm 

 use in the time of Garcia de Orta. Clusius« considered it to be Arabic, 



consulted do not allow 



hom 



for Alting^" 



Others identify it with Rasamala, the Malay 

 excelsa. (See further on.) 



The botanical origin of Liquid Storax was long a perplexing qnestion 

 to pharmacologists. It was correctly determined by Krinos, but m 

 information on the subject published in a Greek newspaper in 1841, an 

 repeated by Koste in 1855,^ attracted no attention in Western J^urop^- 

 The question was also investigated by one of the authors of ^^^ prese 

 work, whose observations, together with a figure of Liqmdamoii 



orien 



-n a 



Meth 



j.xt-i, wciu puuiiHiiea in loo/. . , 



of Extraction— The extraction of Liquid Storax is carrie 

 ..x-^i. ,1 ,, , o . • -.^. _ -i.:„fl,r K^r a tribe 01 



Turcomans 



Minor 



called Yuruks. The process has been descr ^^ 

 on the authority of Maltass and McCraith of Smyrna, and ot^^^V^ J 

 British Consul at Rhodes.^ The outer bark is said to be first remo ^^ 

 from the trunk of the tree and rejected ; the inner is then sen ^^ ^ 

 oflf with a peculiar iron knife or scraper, and thrown into pits u 



^ Ihn Baytar, Sontheimer's transl. ii. 539. 



2 NorofiF, Pilerinage en Terre Sainte de 

 Vlgomr^ne russe Daniel, St. Petersb. 164. 

 4 .—The passagehas been kindly abstracted 

 for us by Prof. Heyd of Stuttgart. 

 /i-oX'?iT r?,' Li^'^r Pontlficalis, RomiB, i. 

 Yi.{.) 9* —The ancient Isauria was iu 

 Cihcia, the country of Styrax officinalis L. 



• On the hnoivledge possessed by the Chinese 



of the Arabia, etc., -Lond. 1871. 19- ^-j 

 » Hist. 0/ Japan, ed. Scheuchzer, 

 « Exoticorum Libn, 24o. ^ .^^ u. 



KaiiTTrt, 1855. 356. • (IS57) 



8 Hanbury, Pharm. Jfrn.^^'; p\per^, 

 417.461.andiv.(lSG3)436;-Sc^«^'^^^ 



127-150. 

 * Hanbury, l,c. 



