0N QUASSIA EXCELSA. 
3 
name Xylopicrum, Xylopia glabra, Bitter wood and 
Bitter ash. 
Dr. Wright, in his account of the medicinal plants of Ja- 
maica, bestowed the name Picrania amara. 
This wood is imported in billets, covered with the smooth 
grayish, sometimes silvery bark. It is white, light, and 
even in its texture, but becomes darker from exposure. 
The taste is intensely bitter. It contains the peculiar bitter 
principle, Quassin, as well as of volatile oil a minute trace, 
gummy extractive, pectin, woody fibre and salts, of which 
nitrate of potassa is most prominent. 
Quassin was first isolated by Thomson, of Glasgow. It oc- 
curs in small,white, prismatic crystals, fusible, odourless, in- 
tensely bitter, readily soluble in alcohol, but slightly so in 
water or ether. Its solubility in water is increased by several 
salts and vegetable principles. Its watery solution is precipi- 
tated white by tannin, but not by iodine, chlorine, corrosive 
sublimate, salts of iron, acetate or diacetate of lead. It is a 
neutral body, though soluble in sulphuric and nitric acids. 
Its composition is C 10 H 6 3 .— Wrigger's Ami. der 
Pharm. and Pereira's Mat. Med. 
The medical effects are those of a pure bitter, tonic and 
roborant, and as such Quassia-wood is used in convales- 
cence, dyspepsia, &c. The mode of exhibition is in cold infu- 
sion, made from the chips or raspings, in tincture or extract. 
In France it is a practice to have cups turned from the 
wood, and to allow water to stand in them until it becomes 
imbued with the active principle. 
The wood is excellent timber, takes a polish, and is used 
in flooring ; it is so obnoxious to insects, that furniture is 
sometimes made of it, as, for instance, bedsteads and clothes' 
presses. — Macfadyen. 
Fee informs us that upon the bark of this tree he has 
found thirteen parasites, while upon that of the Q. amara 
he has found but one, and that not a lichen. The wood 
was confounded with that of the Q. amara, until the source 
