PHARMACOPCIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
from Strophanthus hispidus, D. C. This is on the authority of Hen- 
delot, who observed the plant yielding this poison in Senegambia at 
the River Nunez (246). A specimen of this arrow poison was sent 
to Europe and investigated by Pelikan in 1865. (Comptes Rendus, 
1865, vol. 60, p. 1209.) 
On the east coast of Africa the kombe or gombe poison was in 
use in the Manganjah tribe, located near Lake Nyassa on the banks 
of the River Shire, a tributary of the Zambesi River. Consul Kirk in 
Zanzibar, in 1861, established that this poison originated from a stro- 
phanthus species, and forwarded specimens to Professor Sharpey in 
England for the purpose of investigation (246). Subsequently, in 
1865, Livingstone’s famous reports brought the kombe poison to a 
more general notice among the Europeans (387). 
This species of strophanthus was at first considered identical with 
S. hispidus, D. C., but the plant was shown by Oliver in 1885 to be 
distinct from the latter, and justified the establishing of a new species, 
Strophanthus kombe. 
The physiological features of the drug as a powerful cardiac were 
_ recognized by the first investigators (Sharpey, 1862; Pelikan, 1865; 
Fraser, 1871). Livingstone reports the observation of Consul Kirk 
that the poison remarkably reduced the pulse, but the drug was not 
authoritatively recognized by the medical profession until about the 
year 1885. In this connection it is interesting to note that in Somali- 
land, Africa, the native, in order to establish the virulence of the 
poison, scrapes the skin from his own arm until the blood flows, when 
he applies the poison to the lower end of the bloody pool and watches 
the coagulating effect, from below upward. To the firm of Burroughs, 
Wellcome & Co., London (677-678), is largely due the position that 
Strophanthus occupies in the medical lore of the present day, this be- 
ing due chiefly to the efforts of Mr. Henry S. Wellcome, through his 
friend, Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer. 
STYRAX 
Styrax is the product of a tree native to the southwestern part 
of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands. According to Krinos, of 
Athens, 1862, the earliest allusions to styrax were made by Aétius (6) 
and Paulus Aégineta (494), 1567. The early Arabian physicians were 
acquainted with styrax and its methods of production. The Russian 
Abbott of Tver, 1113-15, describes the tree as found by him in his 
travels through Asia Minor. Styrax reached China as early at least 
as 1368 by means of Arabian caravans, but it 1s now shipped to China 
by way of the Red Sea and India. Its use in medicine is restricted 
mainly to an external application in skin diseases, combined with 
other substances. It has, however, been recommended for internal use. 
and in former times it was a constituent of empirical compounds de- 
signed for internal medication. (Not official in the eighth revision 
Uuos Fa 
85 
