298  Ancient  Materials  for  Paper  Making.  {^'^jun"?i^^'°'' 
ANCIENT  MATERIALS  FOR  PAPER  MAKING. 
It  has  been  generally  believed  that  linen  rags  have  been  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  paper  only  since  the  fourteenth  century,  and  that  pre- 
viously to  that  the  writing  materials  of  the  East  were  chiefly  made 
from  unmanufactured  materials.  This  view  must  be  considerably  mod- 
ified in  consequence  of  a  careful  microscopical  examination  made  by 
Dr.  Julius  Wiesner,  of  the  paper  from  El-Faijum  preserved  in  the 
Austrian  Museum  at  Vienna  in  the  collection  known  as  Papyrus 
Erzherzog  Rainer.^^  Many  of  these  papers  extend  to  the  ninth,  and 
some  are  even  as  old  as  the  eighth  century.  The  papers  are  all 
clayed  ^'  like  modern  papers. 
Dr.  Wiesner's  examination  gave  the  unexpected  result  that  these 
papers  were  all  manufactured  from  rags.  The  fibre  is  mainly  linen 
among  which  are  traces  of  cotton,  hemp  and  of  some  animal  fibre;  well- 
preserved  yarn  threads  are  of  very  frequent  occurrence.  The  manu- 
facture of  paper  out  of  rags  is  not,  therefore,  as  has  hitherto  been  sup- 
posed, either  a  German  or  an  Italian  invention,  but  is  an  Eastern  one. 
In  addition  to  the  Faijum  papers,  he  examined  also  more  than  five 
hundred  Oriental  and  Eastern  specimens  from  the  ninth  to  the  fifteenth 
century,  not  a  single  one  of  which  was  a  raw-cotton  paper;  all  were 
manufactured  from  rags,  the  chief  ingredient  being  linen. 
The  examination  of  the  substance  used  for  "  claying  "  gave  equally 
unexpected  results.  In  all  the  Faijum  papers  this  was  found  to  be 
starch-paste,  a  substance  which  had  been  supposed  not  to  have  been 
used  for  this  purpose  before  the  present  century ;  animal  substances  do 
not  appear  to  have  been  employed  for  "claying"  before  the  fourteenth  or 
fifteenth  century.  In  some  instances  well-preserved  starch-grains  were 
mingled  with  the  paste  ;  these  agreed,  in  form  and  size  of  the  grains, 
with  wheat  starch,  and  were  evidently  prepared  starch  separated  from 
the  meal.  In  two  papers,  belonging  to  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centu- 
ries, buckwheat-starch  was  foifnd,  and  the  cultivation  of  this  sub- 
stance must,  therefore,  be  dated  back  to  the  tenth  century.  The 
object  of  the  "  claying  "  was  apparently  to  increase  the  whiteness  of  the 
paper. — Phar.  Jour,  and  Trans.,  April  14,  1888. 
Metbalal  (see  Amer.  Jour.  Phar.,  1887,  pp.  19,  198,  267,)  is  regarded  by  Dr. 
H.  Krafft  as  the  best  agent,  when  given  hypoderimically,  for  producing  sleep  in 
delirium  tremens,  particularly  in  an  anaemic  condition  of  the  patients. 
