_Radix Ratanhiæ_, _Rhatanhiæ v. Rathaniæ_; _Rhatany or Rhatania
Root, Peruvian or Payta Rhatany_; F. _Racine de Ratanhia_; G.
_Ratanhiawurzel_.[327]
=Botanical Origin=—_Krameriæ triandra_ Ruiz et Pav., a small woody
shrub with an upright stem scarcely a foot high and thick decumbent
branches 2 to 3 feet long.[328] It delights in the barren sandy
declivities of the Bolivian and Peruvian Cordilleras at 3000 to 8000
feet above the sea-level, often occurring in great abundance and
adorning the ground with its red star-like flowers and silver-grey
foliage.
The root is gathered chiefly to the north, north-east, and east of
Lima, as at Caxatambo, Huanuco, Tarma, Jauja, Huarochiri and Canta;
occasionally on the high lands about lake Titicaca. It appears likewise
to be collected in the northern part of Peru, since the drug is now
frequently shipped from Payta.
=History=—Hipolito Ruiz,[329] the Spanish botanist, observed in 1784
that the women of Huanuco and Lima were in the habit of using for the
preservation of their teeth a root which he recognized as that of
_Krameria triandra_, a plant discovered by himself in 1779. On his
return to Europe he obtained admission for this root into Spain in
1796, whence it was gradually introduced into other countries of Europe.
The first supplies which reached England formed part of the cargo
of a Spanish prize, and were sold in the London drug sales at the
commencement of the present century. Some fell into the hands of Dr.
Reece who recommended it to the profession.[330]
About 20 years ago there appeared in the European market some other
kinds of rhatany previously unknown: of these the more important are
noticed at pp. 81, 82.
[327] Ruiz and Pavon state that the root is called at Huanuco
_ratanhia_. The derivation of the word which is of the Quichua language
is obscure.
[328] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, _Medicinal Plants_, part 30 (1876).
[329] _Mem. de la R. Acad. med. de Madrid_, i. (1797) 349—366.
[330] _Medicinal and Chirurgical Review_, Lond., xiii. (1806) ccxlvi.;
also Reece, _Dict. of Domest. Med._, 1808.
=Description=—The root which attains a considerable size in proportion
to the aerial part of the shrub, consists of a short thick crown,
sometimes much knotted and as large as a man’s fist. This ramifies
beneath the soil even more than above, throwing out an abundance of
branching, woody roots (frequently horizontal) some feet long and ¼
to ½ an inch thick. These long roots used formerly to be found in
commerce; but of late years rhatany has consisted in large proportion
of the more woody central part of the root with short stumpy branches,
which from their broken and bruised appearance have evidently been
extracted with difficulty from a hard soil.
The bark which is scaly and rugged, and ⅒ to ¹/₂₀ of an inch in
thickness, is of a dark reddish-brown. It consists of a loose cracked
cork-layer, mostly smooth in the smaller roots, covering a bright
brown-red inner bark, which adheres though not very firmly to a
brownish yellow wood. The bark is rather tough, breaking with a fibrous
fracture. The wood is dense, without pith, but marked with thin vessels
arranged in concentric rings, and with still thinner, dark medullary
rays. The taste of the bark is purely astringent; the wood is almost
tasteless; neither possesses any distinctive odour.
_Kr. cistoidea_ Hook, a plant scarcely to be distinguished from _Kr.
triandra_, affords in Chili a rhatany very much like that of Peru. Its
root was contributed to the Paris Exhibition of 1867.
=Microscopic Structure=—The chief portion of the bark is formed of
liber, which in transverse section exhibits numerous bundles of yellow
fibres separated by parenchymatous tissue and traversed by narrow brown
medullary rays. The small layer of the primary bark is made up of large
cells, the surface of the root of large suberous cells imbued with red
matter. The latter also occurs in the inner cortical tissue, and ought
to be removed by means of ammonia in order to get a clear idea of the
structure. Many of the parenchymatous cells are loaded with starch
granules; oxalate of calcium occurs in the neighbourhood of the liber
bundles. The woody portion exhibits no structure of particular interest.
=Chemical Composition=—Wittstein (1854) found in the bark of rhatany
(the only part of the drug having active properties) about 20 per cent.
of a form of tannin called _Ratanhia-tannic Acid_, closely related to
catechu-tannic acid. It is an amorphous powder, the solution of which
is not affected by emetic tartar, but yields with ferric chloride a
dark greenish precipitate. By distillation Eissfeldt (1854) obtained
pyrocatechin as a product of the decomposition of ratanhia-tannic acid.
The latter is also decomposed by dilute acids which convert it into
crystallizable sugar and _Ratanhia-red_, a substance nearly insoluble
in water, also occurring in abundance ready formed in the bark.
Grabowski (1867) showed that by fusing ratanhia-red with caustic
potash, protocatechuic acid and phloroglucin[331] are obtained.
Ratanhia-red has the composition C₂₆H₂₂O₁₁, the same, according
to Grabowski, as an analogous product of the decomposition of the
peculiar tannic acid occurring (as shown by Rochleder in 1866) in
the horse-chestnut. The same red substance may also be obtained, as
stated by Rembold (1868), from the tannic acid of the root of tormentil
(_Potentilla Tormentilla_ L.).
[331] See art. Kino.
As to rhatany root, Wittstein also found it to contain wax, gum and
uncrystallizable sugar (even in the wood! according to Cotton[332]).
Cotton further pointed out the presence in very minute quantity of
an odorous, volatile, solid body, obtainable by means of ether or
bisulphide of carbon; it occurs in a somewhat more considerable amount
in the other sorts of rhatany. The root contains no gallic acid.
A dry extract of rhatany resembling kino used formerly to be imported
from South America, but how and where manufactured we know not. It
is however of some interest as containing a crystalline body which
Wittstein who discovered it (1854) regards as _Tyrosin_, C₉H₁₁O₃,
previously supposed to be exclusively of animal origin.[333] Städeler
and Ruge (1862) assigned to it a slightly different composition,
C₁₀H₁₃NO₃, and gave it the name of _Ratanhin_. It dissolves in hot
water which is acidulated by a little nitric acid; the solution on
boiling turns red, blue, and lastly green, and becomes at the same
time fluorescent. Kreitmair (1875) extracted 0·7 per cent, of ratanhin
from an old specimen of commercial extract of rhatany; but he did not
succeed in obtaining it from other specimens. He also showed that
ratanhin is _not_ a constituent of the roots of Krameria. The same
substance has been abundantly found by Gintl (1868) in the natural
exudation called _Resina d’Angelim pedra_[334] which is met with in the
alburnum of _Ferreirea spectabilis_ Allem., a large Brazilian tree of
the order _Leguminosæ_ (tribe _Sophoreæ_). Peckolt, who first extracted
it, named it _Angelin_; it forms colourless, neutral crystals yielding
compounds both with alkalis and acids, which have been investigated by
Gintl in 1869 and 1870.
=Uses=—Rhatany is a valuable astringent, but is not much employed in
Great Britain.
=Other sorts of Rhatany=—Of the 20 to 25 other species of _Krameria_,
all of them belonging to America, several have astringent roots which
have been collected and used in the place of the rhatany of Peru. The
most important of these drugs is that known as—
_=Para Rhatany=_,—so called from having been shipped from Pará in
Brazil. Berg who described it in 1865 termed it _Brazilian Rhatany_,
Cotton in 1868, _Ratanhia des Antilles_. It is a drug nearly resembling
the following, but of a darker and less purple hue; it is also in
longer sticks which are remarkably flexible, and covered with a thick
bark having numerous transverse cracks.[335] It is apparently derived
from the _Krameria argentea_ of Martius,[336] the root of which is
collected in the dry districts of the provinces of Bahia and Minas
Geraes, that plant growing throughout north-eastern Brazil. It is also
called _Rhatany from Ceará_.
[332] _Etudes sur le Genre Krameria_ (thèse), Paris, 1868. 83.
[333] Gmelin, _Chemistry_, xiii. (1859) 358.
[334] See Vogl’s Paper on it in Pringsheim, _Jahrbücher für
wissenschaftliche Botanik_, ix. (1874) 277-285.
[335] For further particulars, see Flückiger, _Pharm. Journ._, July 30,
1870. 84.
[336] _Syst. Mat. Med. Bras._, 1843. 51; Langgaard, _Diccionario de
Medicina_, Rio de Janeiro, iii. (1865) 384.—Krameria argentea is
figured in _Flora Brasiliensis_, Fascicul. 63 (1874, pg. 71) tab. 28.
_=Savanilla or New Granada Rhatany.=_ The plant yielding it is
_Krameria tomentosa_ St. Hil. (_Kr. Ixina_ var. β _granatensis_ Triana,
_Kr. grandifolia_ Berg), a shrub 4 to 6 feet high covering large arid
tracts in the valley of Jiron between Pamplona and the Magdalena in
New Granada, in which locality the collection of the root was observed
by Weir in 1864.[337] According to Triana it also grows at Socorro,
south of Jiron. The same plant is found near Santa Marta and Rio Hacha
in north-eastern New Granada, in British Guiana, and in the Brazilian
provinces of Pernambuco and Goyaz.
The stem or root-crown of Savanilla rhatany is never so knotty and
irregular as that of the Peruvian drug, nor are the roots so long or so
thick. Separate pieces of root of sinuous form, 4 to 6 inches long and
²/₁₀ to ³/₁₀ of an inch thick are most frequent. The drug is moreover
well distinguished by its dull purplish brown colour, its thick smooth
bark marked with longitudinal furrows, and here and there with deep
transverse cracks, and by the bark not easily splitting off as it does
in common rhatany.
The anatomical difference depends chiefly upon the more abundant
development of the bark which in thickness is ⅓ to ¼ the diameter of
the wood. In Peruvian rhatany the cortical layer attains only ⅙ to ⅛ of
the diameter of the woody column. The greater firmness of the suberous
coat in Savanilla rhatany is due to its cells being densely filled with
colouring matter.
Savanilla rhatany differs from the Peruvian root in its tannic matter.
This becomes evident by shaking the powdered root (or bark) with water
and iron reduced by hydrogen. The liquid filtered from the Savanilla
sort and diluted with distilled water exhibits an intense violet
colour, that from Peruvian rhatany a dingy brown; the latter turns
light red by alkalis. Thin sections of the Peruvian root assume a
greyish hue when moistened with a ferrous salt; Savanilla root by a
similar treatment displays the above violet colour. The Savanilla root
is richer in soluble matter and from the greater development of its
bark may deserve to be preferred for medicinal use.
In the English market, Savanilla root is of less frequent occurrence
than that of Pará.
A kind of rhatany attributed to _Krameria secundiflora_ DC., a
herbaceous plant of Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, was furnished to Berg
in 1854, but has not been in commerce. Its anatomical structure has
been described by Berg.[338]
[337] Hanbury, _Origin of Savanilla Rhatany_, in _Pharm. Journ._ vi.
(1865) 460.—Also _Science Papers_, 333.—In that paper I referred the
drug to a variety of _Kr. Ixina_ which M. Cotton has shown to differ in
no respect from St. Hilaire’s _Kr. tomentosa_, a conclusion in which,
after careful re-examination of specimens, I fully agree.—D. H.
Fig. of _Kr. Ixina_ in Bentley and Trimen, _Med. Pl._ part 10.
[338] _Bot. Zeitung_, 14th Nov. 1856. 797