132 STORAX. 



1857. modern village of Djebeleh, a few miles to the south of Latakia. 

 The ruins of Marathus still exist. Casius and Amanus are 

 mountains near the Gulf of Iskenderun, stilHo be traced under 

 Turkish names. The position of the ancient countries of 

 Pisidia, Pamphylia and Cilicia in the south-eastern part of 

 Asia Minor is well known ; and Sidon, Cyprus and Crete are 

 familiar to all. In several of these localities, Styrax officinale 

 is at the present day a common wild shrub. 

 Storax of the The drug thus described by these ancient authors is that 



ancients. w hi c h J conceive to be the original and legitimate Storax, namely 

 a fragrant resin in separate, or more or less agglutinated tears, 

 somewhat resembling Benzoin, exuded either spontaneously 

 or after incision, from the trunk of the Styrax officinale of 

 Linnaeus. That such a drug in a state of greater or less purity, 

 was in former, and even in comparatively recent times, an 

 article of commerce, appears certain from the specimens still 

 existing in a few old collections of Materia Medica as well as 

 from the descriptions of the best Storax given by the pharma- 

 cologists of the last century agreeing very fairly with the 

 account left by Dioscorides. 1 



This fine kind of Storax, always extremely scarce, was called 

 amygdaloid from the small, white, almond-like tears of which it 

 partially consisted. It also bore the name Styrax calamitcs, a 

 term derived from the ancient method of packing it in reeds 

 (calami}. 2 It has, however, wholly disappeared from commerce, 

 Slyrax its name alone Styrax calamites or calamita being retained in 



caiamUes. f avour o f ft^ odoriferous, sawdust-like compound which we are 

 accustomed to find in the shops. In France, it is applied to a 

 black, extractiform, odoriferous substance which I shall more 

 particularly describe in a future paper. 



1 See especially Kirsten, Exercitatio de Styrace, Altorf, 1736. 4to. 



a According to Matthiolus, the allusion to Calami in ^connexion with 

 Storax first occurs in Galen. I find the passage to be as follows : 



" Manifestum insuper est Styracem qui in calamis e Parnphilia apportatur, 

 Andromachum praecipere. Paucissiraus autem illic styrax nascitur : tan- 

 tumque ah hoc vulgari distat, quantum a vino quod in tahernis venditur 

 Falernum." (Galen. De Antidotis, lib. i. cap. 14.) 



The term Calamites has been supposed to be derived frem KaTaftaXiTTjs, a 



