PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



ACACIA (Gum Arabic) 



Official in all editions of the U. S. Pharmacopeia, from the 

 first edition, 1820, to that last published, 1910. The 1910 edition 

 limits the use of the gum to that obtained from Acacia Senegal, 

 Willdenow, and other African species of acacia. 



From the most remote records of antiquity, acacia 

 has been an article of commerce. The tree was pictured, 

 together with heaps of the gum, in the reign of Rameses 

 III, of Egypt. Mention of the gum is of frequent oc- 

 currence in Egyptian inscriptions, where it is referred 

 to as the Gum of Canaan. Theophrastus (633), in the 

 3d and 4th centuries B. C., described it, as also did 

 Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514), under the name 

 "Egyptian Gum." Acacia was exported from the Gulf 

 of Aden, seventeen hundred years before Christ. It has 

 thus been employed from all recorded time in both do- 

 mestic medicine and commerce. It was used by the 

 Arabian physicians, 1 and by those of the renowned 

 schools of Salerno. During the Middle Ages, acacia 

 was obtained from Egypt and Turkey, being an article 

 of commerce in the bazaars of Constantinople, 1340 

 A. D. As early as 1521 A. D. it was distributed through 

 Europe, from Venice. Among the most interesting and 



' "On the morning of our separation it was as if I stood in the gardens of our tribe, 

 Amid the acacia shrubs where my eyes were blinded with tears by the smart from 

 the bursting pods of colocynlh." From the oldest of " THE HANGED POEMS." 

 The "Seven Hanged Poems" were so named from the fact that these seven poems, 

 and these only, were considered worthy of "hanging" on the walls of the " Sacred Temple of 

 Mecca." They were heirlooms of Arabian poetry, when at its highest. The date at which 

 the poem was composed from which the above couplet is taken, is unknown. From The 

 Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, edited by Prof. Charles F. Home, 

 Ph.D., we take the following tribute: "It was unanimously agreed to immortalize their fame 

 by conferring on them the highest honor the followers of Mohammed could bestow, that of 

 hanging them inside the Kaaba, the most sacred shrine of their worship, as a memorial to 

 posterity." Note the linking together of the tears (gum) of the acacia and the acrid juice 

 of the colocynth. 



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