March 22, 1S73. 
741 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
AFRICAN AMMONIACUM. 
BY DANIEL HANBURY, F.R.S. 
The first writer to mention Ammoniacnm is said 
to be Dioscorides,* * * § who flourished in the first century, 
and who relates that the drug is the juice of a species 
of Ferula growing about Cyrene in Libya, and that 
it is produced near the temple of Ammon. Whether 
the drug received its designation from the deity or 
the deity from the drug, or whether both took their 
names from the Greek word ’ A/j./j.os } sand, in allusion 
to the parched and sandy desert where both were 
found, were open cprestions in the time of Pliny. 
The story however of the Libyan origin of arnmo- 
niacum remained current for centuries among writers 
on materia medica, and considering that the drug was 
not unfrequently brought from Alexandria, it had 
about it nothing improbable. 
Chardin, who passed many years in Persia (1666- 
1677), is probably one of the "first to point out that 
ammoniacum is a production of that country.f He 
says that the Persians call the plant Ouchag, and that 
it grows in abundance on the southern confines of 
Parthia,—that is to say south of Ispahan, which is 
exactly where it has been found by many travellers 
in modern times. 
Jackson, an English merchant who resided for six¬ 
teen years in Morocco and wrote an instructive ac¬ 
count of that country,! described a sort of ammo¬ 
niacum produced there by a giant fennel called in 
Arabic t eshook. This plant, he says, grows on most 
of the plains of the interior, but especially about El 
Araiche and M’Sharrah Rummellah. The gum exudes 
from the stem in consequence of the puncture of a 
beetle, and falling to the ground becomes contami¬ 
nated with eaith, lor which reason it does not suit 
the London market; but it is used in all parts of the 
country for cataplasms and fumigations. 
Lindley, from the examination of specimens sent 
to England from Tangier in 1839, determined the 
plant affording African ammoniacum to be the 
Ferula Tingitana of Linnaeus.§ | 
Notwithstanding the statement of Jackson that a 
kind of ammoniacum is a production of Morocco, it 
was difficult to believe that this Moroccan drug could 
be the Ammoniacum which the ancients, and espe¬ 
cially Dioscorides, described as brought from Libya. 
Pereira)j and Guibourt** having examined specimens 
of the gum sent to Lindley from Tangier, concurred 
in regarding it as a very different substance from 
Persian ammoniacum. The latter writer even main¬ 
tained that Dioscorides had slipped into an error, and 
that his ammoniacum was probably none other than 
that of our own times. 
It was also pointed out that the word ammoniacum 
was sometimes written armoniacum , which might 
well be a corruption of armeniacum, and point to 
Armenia or some country beyond as the soufce of 
the drug. 
The works of a Persian writerff recently made 
accessible have also proved that ammoniacum was 
a production of Persia as early as the tenth century. 
Lib. iii. c. 88. 
f "I Voyage du Chevalier Chardm en Perse, nouvelle 
Edition par Langles, Paris, III. (18LI) 298. 
X Account of the Empire of Morocco, Lond., 1809. 
§ Pereira, Elem. of Mat. Med. II., part 2 (1853) 1715. 
II Op cit. 
Hist, des drogues, III. (1850) 226. 
ft Abu Mansur Mowafik ben Ali, Liber Fundament or urn 
Pharmacologicp, ed. 8eligmann, 1833. 
Third Series, No. 143. 
. Ehe appearance in London drug sales of a very 
impure kind of ammoniacum, differing notably from 
the worst variety ol the Persian drug, attracted my 
attention so long ago as 1857 ; and I was interested 
m observing a much larger quantity of the same 
article in the year 1871. On this occasion 37 pack¬ 
ages v ere offered for sale. I was unable to ascertain 
whence they had been shipped, but the former lot 
(1857) I lound had been imported from Mogador. 
The drug may be described as in large, compact, 
dark, heavy masses, formed of agglutinated tears of a 
gum-resin of hard, waxy consistence. The tears are 
opaque, w hite, and milk-like, or of a pale greenish 
yellow, or of a fawn colour, mixed with others of a 
dark blackish brown, which with earthy and vegetable 
impurities constitute a large proportion of the mass. 
The drug has a very weak odour not suggestive of 
ammoniacum, and a slightly acrid but very persistent 
taste. 
Having recently had to investigate anew the his¬ 
tory of ammoniacum, I was led to look into the 
various memoirs on the subject, and also to search 
for some information respecting the Morocco drug 
described by Jackson. In the latter inquiry I was for¬ 
tunate enough to have the aid of Mr Moryoseph, a drug 
merchant of London having connexions with Moga¬ 
dor, who not only at once supplied me with a sample 
of the African drug according exactly with that I had 
noticed in the brokers’ salerooms, but also kindly 
wrote to Morocco for some of better quality, which 
proved to be less impure and to contain milky tears 
exactly like. Persian ammoniacum. 
I also enlisted the services of my friend Dr. Leared, 
who during a short visit to Morocco in the past 
autumn ascertained a tew interesting particulars, 
which are to this effect 
The plant is called Icelth, and grows up rapidly 
after the first rains. Its gum is not much shipped to 
Europe, but a great deal of it is taken by pilgrims to 
Egypt and Mecca, where it is used as incense. Its 
chief shipping-port is Mazagan ; a little is sent from 
Mogador but none from other ports. The “ Greatham 
Hall," the vessel in which Dr. Leared embarked, took 
on board 25 serous of the gum at Mazagan for Gib¬ 
raltar, where they were to be reshipped for Alexandria. 
The shippers call it Fasoy. 
The facts I have narrated show that African am¬ 
moniacum is still an object of commerce, and that it 
is consumed not only in Morocco, but that it finds its 
way even to Egypt and Arabia. It can hardly be 
doubted that this traffic is very ancient. Nor is there, 
as it seems to me, any improbability in assuming 
that the ammoniacum which the ancients describe as 
brought from Libya (under which name the whole 
of-Northern Africa westward of Egypt was included) 
is identical with that still collected in Morocco. That 
this Morocco drug resembles the Persian or ordinary 
kind, is evident from the fact that London drug 
brokers have classed it as ammoniacum, in their 
catalogues,—and it is probable enough that the two 
drugs were confounded together at a very early 
period. 
The Morocco gum-resin is used in fumigation: it 
is worthy of note that the ammoniacum spoken of 
by Celsus, Galen, Oribasius, Alexander Trallianus, 
Paulas iEgineta and Actuarius, that is to say by the 
Greek and Roman physicians who lived between the 
first and thirteenth centuries, is frequently described 
as thymiama or sujimen, i. e. an incense, or something 
used for fumigation. 
