STORAX 499 



evaporating should leave a yellowish brown oil, and this warmed to 

 150 should not evolve an odour foreign to balsam of Peru. 



The assay of the balsam may be effected by dissolving 1 gm. of the 

 balsam in ether, removing the resin by shaking this solution with N/2 

 solution of sodium hydroxide, evaporating the ethereal solution, and 

 drying and weighing the residue ; it should amount to not less than 

 57 per cent. Each gramme of this residue (cinnamein) should require 

 not less than 42 c.c. N/10 alcoholic solution of potassium hydr- 

 oxide for saponification, corresponding to a saponification value 

 of at least 235 (the saponification* value of benzyl benzoate being 

 264-3, and of benzyl cinnamate 234-0). Full details of the test will 

 be found in the British Pharmacopoeia (1914), p. 61. 



Recently a factitious substitute, ' perugen,' has been made by 

 mixing synthetically prepared benzyl benzoate (' peruscabin ') with 

 storax, benzoin, and balsam of Tolu. It has an odour quite distinct 

 from that of genuine balsam. 



STORAX 



(Styrax) 



Source, &C. Storax is a balsam obtained from the trunk of Liquid- 

 ambar orientdlis, Miller (N.O. Hamamelid&ce), a tree of medium size 

 forming forests in the south-west of Asiatic Turkey. 



Neither the bark nor the wood of the tree possesses the agreeable 

 odour of storax, and under normal conditions this substance is not 

 produced in any part of the plant. In the early summer, incisions 

 are made or the bark is beaten but not so vigorously as to kill it ; a 

 formation of storax takes place, and the balsam soaks into the wounded 

 bark, which is stripped off in the autumn. From the bark thus 

 saturated the balsam is obtained by pressing it, the residue being 

 subsequently mixed with boiling water (or boiled with water) and 

 again pressed. The liquid balsam thus obtained forms the storax 

 of commerce, whilst the pressed bark was formerly an article of com- 

 merce, under the name of Cortex Thymiamatis. The latter, coarsely 

 ground and mixed .with storax, formed ' Styrax calamitus,' under 

 which name at the present time a factitious mixture is generally 

 sold. 



Although the bark of the tree contains secretion ducts these do not 

 take part in the production of storax, which is secreted in schizogenous 

 ducts in the young wood ; these, by the breaking down of intervening 

 tissue, form schizolysigenous cavities from which the balsam exudes 

 into the wounded bark. The secretion is therefore purely pathological, 

 arid it is produced in the young wood, subsequently finding its way 

 thence into the bark, with which it is removed when the latter is 

 stripped off. 



