642 ZINGIBERACEiE. 



with stems about 4 feet high, clothed with narrow lanceolate leaves, 

 and terminating in short and simple racemes of elegant white flowers, 

 shaded and veined with dull red. It grows cultivated in the island 

 of Hainan in the south of China, and, as is supj)Osed, in some of the 

 southern provinces of the Chinese Empire. 



History — The earliest reference to galangal we have met with 

 occurs in the writings of the Arabian geographer Ibn Khurdadbah^ about 

 A.D. 869-885, who in enumerating the productions of a country called 

 Sila, names galangal together with musk, aloes, camphor, silk, and 

 cassia. Edrisi,^ three hundred years later, is more explicit, for he men- 

 tions it with many other productions of the far East, as brought from 

 India and China to Aden, then a great emporium of the trade of Asia 

 with Egypt and Europe. The physician Alkindi,^ who lived at Bassora 

 and Bagdad in the second half of the 9th century, and somewhat later 

 Rhazes and Avicenna, notice galangal, the use Of which was introduced 

 into Europe^ through the medical system promulgated by them and other 

 writers of the same school. As to Great Britain, galingal, as it was 

 frequently spelt, also occurs in the Welsh " Meddygon Myddfai " (see 

 Appendix). 



Many notices exist showing that galangal was imported with pepper, 

 ginger, cloves, nutmegs, cardamoms and zedoary ; and that during the 

 middle ages it was used in common with these substances as a culinary 

 spice, which it is still held to be in certain parts of Europe.* The 

 plant aflbrding the drug was unknown until the year 1870, when a 

 description of it was communicated to the Linnean Society of London 

 by Dr. H. F. Hance, from specimens collected by Mr. E. C. Taintor, near 

 Hoihow in the north of Hainan. 



Description — The drug consists of a cylindrical rhizome, ha\dng 

 a maximum diameter of about f of an inch, but for the most part 

 considerabl}' smaller. This rhizome has been cut while fresh into short 

 pieces, 1| to 3 inches in length, which are often branched, and are 

 marked transversely at short intervals by narrow raised sinuous rings, 

 indicating the former attachment of leaves or scales. The pieces are 

 hard, tough and shrivelled, externally of a dark reddish -brown, display- 

 ing when cut transversely an internal substance of rather paler hue 

 (but never white), with a darker central column. The drug exhales 

 when comminuted an agreeable aroma, and has a strongly pungent, 

 spicy taste. 



Microscopic Structure — The central portion of the rhizome is 

 separated from the outer tissue by the nucleus sheath, which appears as 

 a well-defined darker line. Yet the central tissue does not diiler much 

 from that surrounding it, both being composed of uniform parenchyme 

 cells, traversed by scattered vascular bundles. There also occur through- 

 out the whole tissue isolated cells loaded with essential oil or resin. 

 But the larger number of cells abound in large starch granules of an 

 unusual club-shaped form. Some cells contain a brown substance, dif- 



^ Workquoted in the Appendix — tome v. was already acquainted with it. 

 294. ■' Hanbnry, Historical Notes on the Eadix 



" G6ograpkie, i. (1836) 51. Galangce of phaiinacij — Journ. of Linnean 



^ De Rerum yradibus, Argentorati, 1531. Society, Bot. xiii. (1871) 20 ; Pharm. Journ. 



162. Sept. 23, 1871. 248; Science Papers, 370. 



* Macer Floridus (see p. 627), cap. 70, 



