=CAMBOGIA.=
_Gummi Gambogia_, _Gummi Gutti_; _Gamboge_; F. _Gomme Gutte_; _G.
Gutti_, _Gummigutt_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Garcinia Morella_ Desrousseaux, var. β.
_pedicellata_, a diœcious tree,[339] with handsome laurel-like foliage
and small yellow flowers, found in Camboja, Siam (province of Chantibun
and the islands on the east coast of the gulf of Siam), and in the
southern parts of Cochin China. It was introduced about thirty years
ago into Singapore where several specimens are still thriving (1873) on
the estate of Dr. Jamie. The finest is now a tree of 20 feet high, with
a trunk a foot in diameter, and a thick, spreading head of foliage.
_G. Morella_ Desr.—The typical form of this tree having _sessile_ male
flowers grows in moist forests of Southern India and Ceylon, and is
capable of affording good gamboge.
_G. pictoria_ Roxb., a large tree of Southern India, produces a sort of
gamboge found by Christian (1846) essentially the same as that of Siam.
It has been examined more recently by Broughton (1871) who states it
to be quite equal to that of _G. Morella_. We have also been unable to
find any difference between the product of _G. pictoria_ as sent from
Ceylon and common gamboge. _Garcinia pictoria_ moreover is thought by
Sir Jos. Hooker to agree with _G. Morella_.
=History=—The Chinese had intercourse with Camboja as early as the
time of the Sung dynasty (A.D. 970-1127); and a Chinese traveller
who visited the latter country in 1295-97, describes gamboge and the
method of obtaining it by incisions in the stem of the tree.[340] The
celebrated Chinese herbal _Pun-tsao_, written towards the close of the
16th century, mentions gamboge (_Tang-hwang_) and gives a rude figure
of the tree. The drug is regarded by the Chinese as poisonous, and is
scarcely employed except as a pigment.
The first notice of the occurrence of gamboge in Europe is in the
writings of Clusius[341] who describes a specimen brought from China
by the Dutch Admiral, Jacob van Neck, and given to him in 1603, under
the name of _Ghittaiemou_.[342] It appears that shortly after this
time it began to be employed in medicine in Europe, for in 1611,
Michael Reuden, a physician of Bamberg, made use of it as he stated in
1613.[343] He termed the drug a “novum gummi purgans,” or also, Gummi
de Peru, the latter strange name no doubt being a corruption of the
above mentioned Ghittaiemou. The appellation “gummi de Peru” is met
with in pharmaceutical tariffs during the 17th and 18th centuries.
[339] It has been named _Garcinia Hanburyi_ by Sir Joseph Hooker
(_Journ. of the Linnean Soc._ xiv., 1873, 435), but I presume my
lamented friend Daniel Hanbury would not have considered the plant
under notice as a distinct species. Consult also Bentley and Trimen,
_Med. Plants_, part 30.—F. A. F.
[340] _Description de Camboge_ in Abel-Remusat’s _Nouv. Mélanges
asiatiques_, i. (1829) 134.—The Chinese traveller calls the exudation
_Kiang-hwang_ which is the name for _turmeric_, but his description is
unmistakeable.
[341] _Exotica_ (1605) 82.
[342] Dr. R. Rost is of opinion that this word is derived from the
Malay _gătáh_, gum, and the Javanese _jamú_ signifying medicinal, such
mixing of the two languages being of common occurrence.
[343] _De nova gummi purgante_, Lipsiæ, 1614. We have only seen the
second edition published at Leiden in 1625, its preface dating from
1613.
Gamboge is one of the articles of the tariff of the pharmaceutical
shops of the City of Frankfort in 1612: “Gutta gemou, a strong
purgative dried juice, coming from the Kingdom of _Patana_ in the
East Indies.” Patana or Patani is the most populous province of the
east coast of the peninsula of Malacca. The Dutch established there
a factory in 1602, and were followed in 1612 by the English. The
settlement was abandoned in 1700; gamboge was probably brought there
from the opposite shore of the gulf of Siam.[344]
In 1615, a considerable quantity of gamboge was offered for sale in
London by the East Indian Company. The entry respecting it in the Court
Minute Books of the company under date October 13, 1615, is to this
effect:—Three chests, one rundlet, and a basket, containing 13, 14,
or 15 hundredweights, more or less, of _Cambogium_ “_a drugge unknown
here_,”—the use of which, was much commended as a “_a gentle purge_,”
were offered for sale at 5s. per lb., but met with no purchaser.
Jacob Bontius,[345] a Dutch physician, resident, towards 1629, in
Batavia, stated that “gutta Cambodja,” as he termed the drug, came from
the country of the same name; he supposed it to be derived from an
Euphorbiaceous plant.
Parkinson,[346] who was an apothecary of London and wrote in 1640,
speaks of this “_Cambugio_,” called by some _Catharticum aureum_, as a
drug of recent importation which arrived in the form of “_wreathes or
roules_” yellow within and without.
In the _London Pharmacopœia_ of 1650, gamboge is called _Gutta
Gamba_[347] or _Ghitta jemou_.
The mother plant of the drug was not fully examined and figured until
1864; yet in 1677 already, Hermann, a German physician residing in
Ceylon, had pointed out that it was a Garcinia.[348]
=Secretion=—We have examined a portion of a branch two inches in
diameter of the gamboge-tree,[349] and have found the yellow gum-resin
to be contained chiefly in the middle layer of the bark in numerous
ducts like those occurring in the roots of _Inula Helenium_ and other
roots of the same natural order. A little is also secreted in the
dotted vessels of the outermost layer of the wood, and in the pith. The
wood, which is white, acquires a bright yellow tint when exposed to the
vapour of ammonia or to alkaline solutions.
=Production=—At the commencement of the rainy season the
gamboge-collectors start for the forest in search of the trees which
in some localities are plentiful. Having found one of the full size
they make a spiral incision in the bark round half the circumference of
the trunk, and place a joint of bamboo to receive the sap which slowly
exudes for several months. When it first issues from the tree, it is
a yellowish fluid, which after passing through a viscid state hardens
into the gamboge of commerce.
[344] Flückiger, _Documente zur Geschichte der Pharmacie_, 1876. 41.
[345] _De Medicina Indorum_, lib. iv. Lugduni Batav. (1642) 119. 150.
[346] _Theatrum Botanicum_ (1640) 1575.
[347] This name is the Hindustani _Gótáganbá_, signifying according to
Moodeen Sheriff (_Suppl. to Pharm. of India_, 83) _juice or extract of
rhubarb_. It is still applied to gamboge.
[348] Hanbury in _Trans. of Linn. Soc._ xxiv. (1864) 487. tab. 50; also
_Science Papers_, 1876. 326.
[349] Obligingly sent to us by Dr. Jamie of Singapore.
The trees grow both in the valleys and on the mountains and will yield
on an average in one season enough to fill three joints of bamboo 20
inches in length by 1½ inches in diameter. The tree appears to suffer
no injury provided the tapping is not more frequent than every other
year.[350]
According to Dr. Jamie of Singapore, the gamboge-tree grows most
luxuriantly in the dense jungles. The best time for collecting is from
February to March or April. The trees, the larger the better, are
wounded by a parang or chopping-knife, in various parts of the trunk
and large branches, when prepared bamboos are inserted between the
root and the bark of the trees. The bamboo cylinders being tied or
inserted, are examined daily till filled, which generally takes from 15
to 30 days. Then the bamboos are taken to a fire, over which they are
gradually rotated till the water in the gum-resin is evaporated and it
gets sufficiently hard to allow of the bamboo being torn off.[351]
=Description=—The drug arrives in the form of sticks or cylinders 1 to
2½ inches in diameter, and 4 to 8 inches in length, striated lengthwise
with impressions from the inside of the bamboo. Often the sticks are
agglutinated, or folded, or the drug is in compressed or in shapeless
masses. It is when good of a rich brownish orange tint, dense and
homogeneous, breaking easily with a conchoidal fracture, scarcely
translucent even in thin splinters. Touched with water it instantly
forms a yellow emulsion. Triturated in a mortar it affords a brilliant
yellow powder, slightly odorous. Gamboge has a disagreeable acrid taste.
Much of the gamboge shipped to Europe is of inferior quality, being
of a brownish hue or exhibiting when broken a rough, granular, bubbly
surface. Sometimes it arrives imperfectly dried and still soft.
=Chemical Composition=—Gamboge consists of a mixture of resin with
15 to 20 per cent. of gum. The resin dissolves easily in alcohol,
forming a clear liquid of fine yellowish-red hue, and not decidedly
acid reaction. It forms darker-coloured solutions with ammonia or the
fixed alkalis, and a copious precipitate with basic acetate of lead.
Perchloride of iron colours a solution of the resin deep blackish brown.
By fusing purified gamboge resin with potash, Hlasiwetz and Barth
(1866) obtained acetic acid and other acids of the same series,
together with _phloroglucin_, C₆H₃(OH)₃, _pyrotartaric_ acid, C₅H₈O₄,
and _isuvitinic_ acid, C₆H₃CH₃(COOH)₂.
The gum which we obtained to the extent of 15·8 per cent. by completely
exhausting gamboge with alcohol and ether, was found readily soluble in
water. The solution does not redden litmus, and is not precipitated by
neutral acetate of lead, nor by perchloride of iron, nor by silicate or
biborate of sodium. It is therefore not identical with gum arabic.
[350] Spenser St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, Lond.
1862. ii. 272.
[351] _Pharm. Journ._ iv. (1874) 803.
=Commerce=—The drug finds its way to Europe from Camboja by Singapore,
Bangkok, or Saigon. In 1877 the first place exported 240 peculs,
Bangkok in 1875 no less than 346 peculs, value 48,835 dollars; from
Saigon there have of late been shipped from 30 to 40 peculs annually
(one pecul = 133·3 lbs. = 60·479 kilogrammes).[352]
=Uses=—Gamboge is a drastic purgative, seldom administered except in
combination with other substances.
=Adulteration=—The Cambojans adulterate gamboge with rice flour, sand,
or the pulverized bark of the tree,[353] which substances may be easily
detected in the residue left after exhausting the drug successively by
spirit of wine and cold water.
=Other Sources of Gamboge=—Although the gamboge of European commerce
appears to be exclusively derived from the form of the plant named at
the head of this article, _Garcinia travancorica_ Beddome, is capable
of yielding a similar drug which may be collected to some small extent
for local use, but not for exportation. It is a beautiful tree of the
southern forests of Travancore and the Tinnevelly Ghats (3,000 to 4,500
feet). According to its discoverer Lieut. Beddome,[354] it yields an
abundance of bright yellow gamboge.