SACCHARUM 279 



India or the Indo-Chinese countries and islands. As 

 made from the cane, sugar has been known from time 

 immemorial. It is mentioned by such early writers as 

 Theophrastus (633) and Herodotus (314a), and others, 

 who knew raw sugar as honey of canes, and in the early 

 Christian era sugar became well known under the name 

 saccharon. Dioscorides, 77 A. D., describes it as ob- 

 tained from India and Arabia Felix, stating that in 

 brittleness, it resembled salt. Pliny mentions it under 

 the name saccharum, and an unknown writer, 54-68 

 A. D., mentions it as an article of import to the ports 

 of the Red Sea opposite Aden. (For description of 

 that country, see Burton's First Footprints) (113), but 

 it is doubtful whether it was brought from the eastern 

 or western parts of India. It is mentioned by Abu 

 Zayd al Hasan (240), 850 A. D., as produced on the 

 Persian Gulf, and in 950 A. D., Moses of Chorene 

 states that it was then manufactured in quantities. 

 Sugar was introduced into medicine in the 10th and 

 llth centuries by Rhazes, a physician of Persia, who 

 died about 923 A. D., Haly Abbas (295) and others; 

 but it had ever been employed, as it is still employed, 

 in domestic medicine for the purpose of disguising un- 

 pleasant materials, and for sweetening acrid substances. 

 Burton (113) found crude sugar an article of domestic 

 use by several tribes of native Africans. As a remedy 

 in itself, sugar has been quite often a therapeutic factor 

 in both domestic and regular medicine. The value of 

 sugar as a food was scarcely appreciated before the 

 middle of the 19th century, it being generally accepted 

 as a "sweetener," pleasant to the taste, especially with 

 children. At the present time, 1918, sugar is recog- 

 nized as one of the most important foods. 



