276 HAMAMELIDEiE. 



Adulteration — The drug is occasionally mixed with sand, ashes, and 

 other substances ; these would be detected by solution in spirit of wine, 

 as well as by the microscope. 



Allied Substances. 



Styrax Calamita (Storax en pain Guibourt) — The substance that 

 now bears this name is by no means the Styrax Calamita of ancient 

 times, but is an artificial compound made by mixing the residual 

 Liquidambar bark called Cortex Thymiamatis (p. 273), coarsely pow- 

 dered, with Liquid Storax in the proportions of 8 to 2. It is at first a 

 clammy mass, acquiring after a few weeks an appearance of mouldiness, 

 due to minute silky crystals of styracin. It is usually imported in 

 wooden drums, and has a very sweet smell. When the bark is scarce, 

 common sawdust is substituted for it, while qualities still inferior are 

 made up with the help of olibanum, honey, and earthy substances. 

 This drug is manufactured at Trieste, Venice and Marseilles. 



Several other odoriferous compounds, of which Liquid Storax appears 

 to be the chief ingredient, are made in the East and may still be found 

 in old drug warehouses.^ 



Resin of Styrax officinalis L.; True Storax — This was a solid 

 resin somewhat resembling benzoin, of fragrant, balsamic odour, held in 

 great estimation from the time of Dioscorides and Pliny down to the 

 close of the last century. It was perhaps the "storace odorifero" 

 exported in the 12th century from Pantellaria^ and Sicily. The drug 

 was obtained from the stem of Styrax officinalis L. (Styracece), a native 

 of Greece, Asia Minor and Syria, now found also in Italy and Southern 

 France. This plant when permitted to grow freely for several years, 

 forms a small tree, in which state alone it appears to be capable of 

 affording a fragrant resin. But in most localities it has been re- 

 duced by ruthless lopping to a mere bush, the young stems of 

 which yield not a trace of exudation. True storax has thus utterly 

 disappeared. 



Professor Krinos of Athens has informed us (1871) that about 

 Adalia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, a sort of solid storax 

 obtained from 8. officinalis is still used as incense in the churches and 

 mosques. The specimen of it which he has been good enough to send 

 us, is not however resin, but sawdust ; it is of a pale cinnamon-brown, 

 and pleasant balsamic odour. By keeping, it emits an abundance of 

 minute acicular crystals (styracin?). The substance is interesting in 

 connection with the statement of Dioscorides, that the resin of Styrax 

 is adulterated with the sawdust of the tree itself, and the fact that the 

 region where this sawdust is still in use is one of the localities for the 

 drug (Pisidia) which he mentions. 



Resin of Liquidambar styracijlua L. — a large and beautiful tree, 

 native of North America from Connecticut and Illinois southward to 

 Mexico and Guatemala. In the United States, where it is called Siveet 

 Gum, the tree yields from natural fissures or by incision, small quanti- 

 ties of a balsamic resin, which is occasionally used for chewing. We 



^The Storax noir of Guibourt is one of same book " cotone 8torace e corallo" occur 

 these. as articles of export from Sicily. 



2 Quoted before, p. 163, note 3; in the 



