$08 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[April 8, 1871. 
mace in weight, which are formed into square blocks. 
The second quality is called Ko-tsze-hung-hwa, and is 
made from the heart of the flower dried. An inferior 
description grows in Honan. A small trial shipment 
has been made to Marseilles, hut the result is not known. 
White wax, insect wax or pela, is also produced in 
Szechuen in large quantities. The insect which makes 
the wax is found in Yunnan on a tree, which is merely 
designated the Chung-sliu, or insect tree. On this tree 
the insect forms a case containing hundreds of eggs, 
which is removed in the fourth moon and placed on the 
la-shu (wax-tree) in Szechuen. The insects come out of 
the case and commence secreting the wax round them¬ 
selves, which operation is finished by the seventh moon, 
when the insect dies and the wax is collected. It bears 
a high market value, and is prepared at a trifling cost. 
The journey into Yunnan to procure the insect includes 
all that can be called expense or labour in the production. 
The insect does the rest, and the proprietors have to do 
little more than take the wax off the tree when it is 
ready ; yet 500,000 taels would probably be a small esti¬ 
mate of the value of this wax exported annually from 
Szechuen. It is found also in Yunnan and Kweichow, 
but probably the Szechuen product is the best in quality, 
as it certainly is the most abundant. 
The quantity of cassia has increased year by year 
since 1864, when the shipment was 13,800 piculs against 
40,600 piculs in 1869. The export of musk, too, during 
1869, was slightly in excess of that of 1868. On the 
contrary, the shipments of gall-nuts in 1869, amounted 
to not quite half the quantity of the previous years. 
Sulphur is produced in considerable quantities in the 
hills near Yun-yang-hien, and a small quantity in Kwei¬ 
chow. Kweichow is also rich in mines of lead, copper, 
and especially of quicksilver, which latter were being 
worked with great advantage previously to the late re¬ 
bellions, but have not since been resumed. 
Tung oil is one of the largest products of Szechuen. 
The tung-shu tree grows everywhere throughout the 
province, preferring steep places with patches of good 
soil. The export of this article from Hankow by vessels 
under foreign flags was, in 1868, 174,000 piculs. Other 
oils are produced, as tsai-yew (cabbage or rape oil), che- 
ma-yew (tilseed oil), hwa-yew (ground-nut oil) and cha- 
yew (tea oil), but these are unimportant as articles of 
commerce. 
LIME-JUICE AND PEPSINE.* 
Besides pepsine and pancreatine, now much used as 
aids to digestion, there are certain food solvents equally 
worthy of attention, which have hitherto been some¬ 
what neglected. The gastric juice, besides certain saline 
matters, contains a free acid and the organic substance 
called pepsine, both of which are secreted by a healthy 
stomach during a meal, and are essentially necessary for 
its digestion. While pepsine always constitutes the fer- 
mentive principle, the acid of the gastric fluid varies,— 
hydrochloric, phosphoric, lactic and acetic acids having- 
been found therein. The gastric juice is in itself anti¬ 
septic, and this antiseptic virtue appears to depend 
greatly upon the acid portion. A few grains of pepsine 
moistened with water and submitted to a temperature of 
100°, will in a short time ferment and emit a strong, 
almost urinous, odour. But if a few drops of hydro¬ 
chloric, phosphoric or acetic acid be previously added, 
no such smell will be perceived. The solvent effect of 
certain acids upon albuminoids may be shown by coarsely 
bruising a small portion of meat and adding sufficient 
water to cover it, acidulated with either of the above- 
mentioned acids,—hydrochloric acid especially. If the 
mixture be then digested at the heat of the stomach for 
three or four hours, it will be found that although not 
* Abstracted from a paper on “Food Solvents,” by Dr. 
Archer Farr, published in the Medical Times and Gazette 
March 18th, 1871. 
reduced to such a homogeneous as it would have been 
by pepsina porci, nevertheless the solvent action of tho 
acid is manifest. 
In order to test the comparative digestive powers of 
hydrochloric acid and pepsine, Eberle suspended a solid 
piece of meat in a solution of each. He found that, in a 
few hours, the piece of meat in the pepsine solution had 
wholly disappeared, but the piece in the acid solution 
remained. Although this experiment proves that pep¬ 
sine constitutes the digestive principle of the gastric 
juice, it does not prove that the acid is not a food 
solvent. Pepsine dissolves by virtue of its fermentive 
action. There is evidently an attracting affinity between 
the ferment and the albuminoid resembling chemical 
affinity, inasmuch as a new compound is the result. 
The acid, possessing no such affinity, acting on such a 
complex texture as a piece of meat, and that in a state 
of rest, could not be expected more than partially to 
exert its solvent action under circumstances so unfavour¬ 
able to its action. But if the changes that food under¬ 
goes previous to and on entering the stomach—by masti¬ 
cation and by the powerful muscular action of the stomach 
—be taken into consideration, it will be readily perceived 
that it is here that the acid of the gastric juice, if it act 
at all as a food solvent, would be found to exercise its 
power. This may explain the modus operandi of lime- 
juice and other acids in curing or preventing scurvy. 
All the acids that have been discovered in the gastric- 
juice are, without exception, antiscorbutics. 
Dr. Farr considers that indigestion also may arise 
almost or quite as frequently from a want of acid as. 
from a deficiency of pepsine in the gastric juice. He 
has noticed many times that -where pepsine alone has 
failed to relieve dyspepsia, the exhibition of one of the 
non-astringent acids has been successful. Believing 
that the prophylactic virtue of lime-juice and other acids 
depended upon their direct action as food solvents, it 
occurred to him that an excellent artificial gastric juice 
might be made by allowung lime-juice to represent the 
acid portion. Accordingly he had a mixture of lime- 
juice and pepsine prepared, which he reports that he 
and many of his medical friends have used successfully' 
in cases of dyspepsia. He say r s that lime-juice with 
either pepsine or pancreatine makes a very elegant pre¬ 
paration, is very convenient for prescribing, and may be 
made to keep almost any length of time without dete¬ 
rioration. 
KTote on Milk-Ash. —Mr. J. A. Wanklyn writes as 
follows:—The statement current in the text-books that 
caseine is kept in solution in milk by means of alkali, 
with which it forms a kind of salt, cannot be correct,, 
inasmuch as I find, on examining the ash left on incine¬ 
rating milk, that there is no appreciable quantity either 
of alkali or of alkaline carbonate. The experiment was 
made on two specimens of milk, one from Hertfordshire, 
and the other from Essex. I evaporated down ten 
grammes of milk in a small platinum dish, incinerated 
the residue, and then moistened the ash with water,, 
added drops of very dilute standard sulphuric acid, and 
observed the reaction on litmus-paper. After the addi¬ 
tion of 0’5 cubic centimetre of standard acid, the action 
on litmus-paper is not alkaline; and on the addition of 
1 c. c. the reaction is distinctly acid. 0'5 c. c. corre¬ 
sponded to 2\ milligr. IL 8 0 4 . Milk-ash, if it contain 
any alkali at all, does not contain so much as 2 per cent, 
of carbonate of soda, and the ratio of alkali to caseine 
cannot be so large as 2 to 400 .—British Medical Journal. 
Prevention of “ Pitting ” in Small-pox. —The 
Media Azadirachta , L., an Indian plant, is used by 7 the 
natives to cover the bodies of patients recovering from 
small-pox, as it is supposed to'prevent the mark from 
becoming permanent. Dr. Wight says of this tree 
that “ the leaves beaten into a pulp and externally ap¬ 
plied act like a charm in removing the most intractable 
form of psora and other pustular eruptions.”—A ature K 
