642 ZINGIBERACEiE. 



with stems about 4 feet high, clothed with narrow lanceolate leaves, 

 and terminating in short and simple racemes of elegant white flowers, 

 shaded and veined with dull red. It grows cultivated in the island 

 of Hainan in the south of China, and, as is supposed, in some of the 

 southern provinces of the Chinese Empire. 



History— The earliest reference to galangal we have met with 

 occurs in the writings of the Arabian geographer Ibn Khurdadbah^ about 

 A.D. 8G9-88o, who in enumerating the productions of a country called 

 Sila, names galangal together with musk, aloes, camphor, silk, and 

 cassia. Edrisi,^ three hundred years later, is more explicit, for he men- 

 tions it with many other productions of the far East, as brought from 

 India and China to Aden, then a great emporium of the trade of Asia 

 with Egypt and Europe. The physician Alkindi,' who lived at Bassora 

 and Bagdad in the second half of the 9tli century, and somewhat later 

 Rhazes'and Aviceiina, notice galangal, the use of which was introduced 

 into Europe"* through the medical system promulgated by them and other 

 writers of the same school. As to Great Britain, galingal, as it was 



frequently spelt, also occurs in the Welsh " Meddygon Myddfai " (see 

 Appendix). 



Many 



J 



ginger, clovas, nutmegs, cardamoms and zedoary ; and that during the 

 middle ages it was used in common with these substances as a cuHiiary 

 spice, which it is still held to be in certain parts of Europe.^ The 

 plant affording the drug was unknown until the year 1870, when a 

 description o£ it was communicated to the Linnean Society of London 



H. F. Hance. from specimens collected bv Mr 



Hainan 



Description — The drug consists of a cylindrical rhizome, having 

 a maximum diameter of about f of an inch, but for the most part 

 considerably smaller. This rhizome has been cut while fresh into snort 

 pieces, 1| to 3 inches in length, which are often branched, and are 

 marked transversely at short intervals by narrow raised sinuous rmgs, 

 indicating the former attachment of leaves or scales. The pieces are 

 hard, tough and shrivelled, externally of a dark reddish-brown, display- 

 ing when cut transversely an internal substance of rather paler hue 

 (but never white), with a darker central column. The drug exhales 

 when comminuted an agreeable aroma, and has a strongly pungen , 



taste. 



Microscopic Structure— The central portion of the rhizome is 

 separated from the outer tissue "by the nucleus sheath, which appears a- 

 a well-defined darker line. Yet the central tissue does not differ muci 

 from that surrounding it, both being composed of uniform pal'eJlch}^" 

 cells, traversed by scattered vascular bundles. There also occur throug - 

 out the whole tissue isolated cells loaded with essential oil or resi^^ 

 But the larger number of cells abound in large starch granules ot a 



*=> n ...V ,+ nTlPA all 



unusual club-shaped form. Some cells contain a brown substance, t 



W orkquoted in the Appendix— tome v. was already auqnainted with it. .. 



29*-, , Hanbury. Ilistorical Notes on the ^ 



: Gfographie, i. (1S36) 51. Galang^^ of liharmacy-Journ' ^J ^'""j 



iflo ^^"'"^ gradihv><, Argentorati, ir.3I. Sockty, Bot. xiii. (1871) 20 ; ^„^«'''", "^o-q. 



162. _ Sept. 23, 1871. 248 ; Science Papen, .^-" 

 -Vlacer Flondus (see p. 627), cap. 70, 



