ON THE SOURCES AND COMPOSITION OF GAMBOGE. 
to hear of any specimens existing even in 
the collections of this country, except those 
I have examined.! 
To these facts regarding the commercial 
sources of Gamboge, I may add one, which, 
so far as I am aware, is not known to Phar- 
macologists, and which is not unimportant 
in relation to an opinion I have deduced 
from chemical analysis, as to the nature of 
one variety of the drug, namely, that a 
kind of it, resembling in appearance the 
Gamboge of Ceylon, is also produced in 
the island of Borneo. This is obtained at 
the towns of Mampára and Pontianah in 
Borneo, is conveyed thence by the Malay 
coasters to Singapore, and is there bought 
by the Chinese, to be purified and made 
up for the European market. This inform- 
ation I owe to an intelligent pupil of our 
University, Mr. James B. Allan, who some 
years ago saw the article at Singapore, in 
the course of its passage into the hands of 
the Chinese. 
; Considering the great varieties that exist 
ìn the commercial qualities and origin of 
Gamboge, together with the inaccessible 
nature of the countries whence some of 
them are obtained, it cannot appear sur- 
Prising that the botanical source of the drug 
15 involved in some doubt and obscurity. 
The first notice we have of an attempt 
refer it to a particular tree, is by Bon- 
tius, who practised medicine early in the 
Seventeenth century at Batavia, and who 
De to have been familiarly acquainted 
the drug and its effects. In his well- 
E Work, published after his death by 
se » a Euphorbiaceous plant is described 
tg under the name of Esula In- 
; and he says it yields a milky juice 
mem oan made in its stem, and that 
(fers neither in. form, figure, nor 
ek of growth,” from the plant which 
the Gamboge of Cambodja in Siam.? 
ih 
iiis may be well here to complete the commercial 
d of this substan 
to inform: ti 
ee wee is now an article of sale 
n the Coromandel t 
e Ael, andel coast. 
Bontii Hist. Natur. et Medic. Indiz Orient. 
For nearly a century the opinion of Bon- 
tius seems to have regulated the doctrine 
of medical Botanists, so far as regarded 
the source of Siam Gamboge. But not 
long after the publication of his treatise, it 
was also announced, chiefly through the 
researches of Hermans, who resided at 
Colombo for seven years subsequent to 
1670, and was afterwards a Professor in 
the University of Leyden, that other vari- 
eties of Gamboge were obtained from two 
trees growing in Ceylon, which are at pre- 
sent generally believed to be the Garcinia 
Cambogia and Stalagmitis Cambogioides 
of modern Botanists. In a letter address- 
ed in 1677 to Syen, another Leyden Pro- 
fessor, and the annotator of Van Rheede’s 
Hortus Malabaricus, Hermans observes, 
that both trees afford a kind of Gamboge, 
but that the latter yields the more esteem- 
ed variety. Although Syen, in his note, 
cautions the reader against confounding 
these Gamboges with the Gamboge of the 
shops, which was then, as now, derived 
entirely from Siam, and although Hermans 
himself, in a subsequent work of his own 
upon Materia Medica, published in 1710, 
seems to refer Gamboge incorrectly to the 
plant which is now known to be the Gar- 
cinia Cambogia, it will nevertheless ap- 
pear from the sequel, that in mentioning 
the other species of tree to his countryman 
Syen, as the source of the best kind of 
Ceylon Gamboge, this Botanist has really 
earned the merit of being the first to indi- 
cate the true origin of the Cingalese vari- 
ety of the drug. Since that time almost 
every attempt which has been made to 
render our information on the subject more 
correct or more precise, has in reality had 
a tendency directly the reverse. In 1748, 
Linneus, in publishing a list of Ceylon 
plants from certain recovered manuscripts 
of Hermans, which had been missing for 
nearly fifty years, committed the strange 
ex Edit. Pisonis, Amsteladami 1658. Lib. vi. Cap. 
lvii. p. 153. 
3 Van Rheede. Hortus Malabaricus, 1678. i. 42. 
tab. 24. 
4 Pauli Hermanni Cynosura Mat. Med. ante sede- 
i inl issa, &c. cum annot. Henninger 
cim 
et Boecler, 1726. p. 685. 
