35^ 
Gurjun  Balsam. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\      Aug  ,  1875. 
GURJUN  BALSAM. 
BY  WILLIAM  GILMOUR.* 
Gurjun  balsam,  or  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  wood  oil,  though  excit- 
ing little  more  than  a  passing  notice,  has  been  known  for  some  consid- 
erable time,  it  having  been  noticed,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  for  the  first 
time  more  than  twenty  years  ago  in  the  pages  of  the  "  Pharmaceutical 
Journal,"  as  a  supposed  new  kind  of  balsam  of  copaiba. f 
It  was  correctly  traced  some  time  later  to  its  sources  by  Mr.  Han- 
bury,  who  also  mentioned  some  of  its  peculiarities  and  distinguishing 
characteristics,  comparing  it  with  balsam  of  copaiba,  to  which  it  is 
closely  allied,  and  which  it  strikingly  resembles. 
It  is  obtained  by  incision  from  the  Dipterocarpus  Icevis^  and  other  trees 
of  allied  genera — indigenous  in  the  hot  damp  Indian  forests — and  can 
be  obtained  in  such  quantities  that  the  natives  employ  it  for  many  of 
the  purposes  to  which  we  in  this  country  put  some  of  the  more  com> 
mon  oils. 
I  have  been  induced  to  call  your  attention  to  this  substance  from  the 
most  remarkable  results  obtained  by  its  use,  first  in  the  treatment  of 
leprosy  in  India  and  since  then  in  our  own  country  in  cases  of  skin 
disease.  Through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Wm.  Dougall,  brother  to  the 
discoverer  of  its  important  therapeutical  effects  in  cases  of  leprosy,  I 
was  lately  afforded  a  perusal  of  his  official  report  to  the  Indian  govern- 
ment on  the  subject — a  report  at  once  so  exceedingly  interesting  in 
itself  and  valuable  in  its  results  that  I  felt  assured  a  very  brief  summary 
of  it  would  prove  acceptable  to  you. 
Passing  over,  then.  Dr.  DougalPs  account  of  the  condition  in  which 
he  everywhere  found  that  most  miserable  and  wretched  of  all  the  many 
miserable  and  wretched  in  India,  the  leprous,  together  with  his  earlier 
treatment  and  experiments  for  their  alleviation,  we  come  to  the  point 
at  which,  by  a  happy  thought  (for  it  seems  to  have  been  nothing  more) 
he  was  induced  to  try  the  effects  of  a  course  of  this  balsam.  Noticing 
a  decided  mitigation  of  all  the  more  marked  and  worse  characteristics  of 
the  disease  under  its  influence,  he  was  encouraged  to  begin  a  more 
extensive  and  systematic  use  of  it  in  the  Haddo  Leprous  Hospital^ 
Andaman  Islands. 
*  Read  before  the  North  British  branch  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society,  March  5. 
f  See     Amer.  Journal  of  Pharmacy,"  18.56,  159. 
