TAMPICO JALAP-GALANGAL PAREIRA BRAVA. 



511 



1875. 



Manna. 



Tampico 

 Jalap. 



tomentosa, St. Hilaire (Kr. Ixina, var. ft. granatensis, Triana. 

 Kr. grandifolia, Berg.) The Historical Remarks on Manna, 

 written in 1865, may be held up as a pattern of compre- 

 hensive reading, appropriate treatment and lucid statement. They 

 were afterwards satisfactorily completed through their author's 

 ahove-mentioned journey to Calabria and Sicily. 



In the following year Mr. Hanbury's long continued researches 

 on the subject of Tampico jalap were crowned with success. 

 He found that it is the root of an Ipomcea (in which his prac- 

 tised eye recognised a new species x ) growing in the interior of 

 Mexico, in the Sierra Gorda, and at Oaxaca. Those who had 

 the opportunity of seeing in his garden this Ipomcea simulans, 

 HANBURY besides the common jalap convolvulus, Ipomcea 

 purga could not mistake the difference between the two 

 plants, in spite of their great similarity. 



For a thousand years Galangal root has been known as a spice Galangal. 

 and medicine, but again Mr. Hanbury's researches were needed 

 to obtain, at last, certainty as to its origin, through the assist- 

 ance of Dr. H. Fletcher Hance, of Whampoa (the roadstead of 

 Canton). 



This botanist had, at Mr. Hanbury's- instigation, in 1867, 

 caused search to be made for the plant yielding this rhizome, on 

 the Chinese island of Hainan, south-west of Canton, and soon 

 received it through an American, Mr. Taintor, a custom-house 

 officer in Chinese employ. Dr. Hance named it Alpinia 

 officinarum ; Mr. Hanbury adding to the description 2 remarks 

 evidencing his usual care, and which trace back the history of 

 the drug to the early middle ages. 



Mr. Hanbury's researches concerning Pareira Brava, 3 in 1873, PareiraBrava. 

 combined all the excellences of his diligence, and the result 

 will always form a remarkable contribution to the history of 

 Pharmacognosis, although that root, still valued in England, has 

 long been forgotten with us. 



1 Yearly Report of Pharm. 1870, 81. Sketch of Ipomcea simulans in 

 Journ. of the Linn. Soc. JBol., xi. (1871), 272. 



2 Yearly Hep. of Pharm, (1871), 33. 



3 16. 1873, 125, with sketch. 



