LAURUS CINNAMOMUM. 
37 
The oil of cinnamon is prepared in the Island of Ceylon by mace- 
rating the bark for two days in sea water, then distilling with a slow 
fire, and separating the oil from the water with which it comes over. 
Eighty pounds of cinnamon yield about five ounces of a heavy oil, 
and two ounces of an oil swimming on distilled water ; on an 
average eleven pounds of cinnamon yield one ounce of oil.* In 
Ceylon the coarse unsaleable cinnamon is used for the distillation of 
the oil. Cinnamon oil is seldom to be met with pure, being generally 
adulterated with some expressed oil or alcohol. 
Sensible Qualities, &c. Cinnamon has a pleasant fragrant 
odour, and a peculiar sweet pungent taste. When good, it is 
somewhat pliable, thin, of a light yellowish-brown colour, and 
breaks ia splinters. The inferior sorts, or what are called Chinese 
cinnamon, are much thicker, of a darker colour, less sweet, and 
more hot and pungent. 
These qualities depend entirely upon the essential oil, which, when 
pure, is of a pale gold colour, heavier than water, perfectly soluble 
in alcohol, extremely hot and pungent,f with the taste and odour 
of the bark. This oil, when kept for many years, deposits a few 
crystals of a resinous nature. The aromatic qualities of cinnamoa 
are extracted by water in infusion, but more powerfully by it in 
distillation, and in both ways also by proof spirit. 
Medical Profekties ajno Usks. Cinnamon is a very use- 
ful and elegant aromatic and astringent. It is also cordial and 
tonic, and more grateful both to the palate and stomach than many 
other substances of this class ; hence it proves of much service in 
several kinds of alvine fluxes, immoderate discharges from the 
uterus, in languid and weakened state of the intestines, dyspepsia, 
and nervous debility. The essential oil is one of the most imme- 
diate cordials and restoratives in languor, singultus, cramp of 
the stomach, flatulent colic, and debility. Cinnamon is given in 
substance (when powdered) in doses of from ten to twenty or thirty 
grains ; and the oil, in doses of a drop or two, with a little sugar, 
mucilage, &c. 
♦ Neumann obtained only two scrnples and a half of oil from one ponnd of the bark. 
Vide Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 188. 
+ The pure oil is so extremely pungent, that on being applied to the skin it prodnces 
an eschar. 
VOL II. G 
