ON THE EESJN OF AMUCARIA BIDWILLl. 



By JOSEPH LAUTERER, M.D. 



[Bead before the Royal Society of Queensland, November 17, 1894.] 



A REMEDY like the gum resins, useful as a stimulant for the 

 mucous membranes and for external application, is the resin or 

 rather gum resin of our Araucarias. The Araucarias belong to 

 a. tribe of the Coniferas and have a rather smooth bark out of 

 which a resin exudes or rather a kind of milk when the bark is 

 wounded. The milk hardens very quickly and looks then like 

 tallow running down from a burning tallow candle. The resin 

 never collects under the bark in form of bubbles as it does on the 

 atems of European. pines like Abies excelsa and A. pectinata. 



The resin of the Araucarias contains a high percentage of 

 arable gum. The resin known as Dammar, derived from 

 Agathis robusta and Dammara orientalis has already been 

 examined by Dulk, one of my teachers in materia medica, and 

 has been recognised as containing arabin. Heckel in Marseille 

 claims the priority of this innocent discovery and Maiden in 

 Sydney does the same for the resin of Araucaria Cunninghamii. 

 The latter compares it with frankincense, which he supposes to 

 be " the produce of various species of Pinus " though it is 

 derived from 2-3 species of Boswellia, a genus belonging to 

 the family Amyrideae coming near to Anacardiaceae to which 

 the mango-tree and the genus Rhus belongs. 



