_Cassia Fistula_; _Purging Cassia_; F. _Casse Canefice_, _Fruit du
Caneficer_; G. _Röhrencassie_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Cassia Fistula_ L. (_Cathartocarpus Fistula_
Pers., _Bactyrilobium Fistula_ Willd.) a tree indigenous to India,
ascending to 4000 feet in the outer Himalaya, but now cultivated or
subspontaneous in Egypt, Tropical Africa,[852] the West Indies and
Brazil. It is from 20 to 30 feet high (in Jamaica even 50 feet) and
bears long pendulous racemes of beautiful fragrant, yellow flowers.
Some botanists have established for this tree and its near allies a
separate genus, on account of its elongated, cylindrical indehiscent
legume, but by most it is retained in the genus _Cassia_.
[849] _Op. cit._ (See p. 218).
[850] _Dispensatory_, ed. 2. 1848. 850.
[851] The reader will find figures of these leaves contrasted with
Senna in Pereira’s _Elem. of Mat. Med._ ii. part ii (1853) 1866.
[852] Schweinfurth found it in 6° N. lat. and 28-29° E. long., in the
country of the Dor, where the tree may also be indigenous.
=History=—The name _Casia_ or _Cassia_ was originally applied
exclusively to a bark related to cinnamon which, when rolled into a
tube or pipe, was distinguished in Greek by the word σῦριγζ, and in
Latin by that of _fistula_. Thus Scribonius Largus,[853] a physician
of Rome during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius, with the latter of
whom he is said to have visited Britain, A.D. 43, uses the expression
“_Casiæ rufæ fistularum_” in the receipt for a collyrium. Galen[854]
describing the different varieties of cassia, mentions that called
_Gizi_[855] (γίζεις) as being quite like cinnamon or even better; and
also names a well-known cheaper sort, having a strong taste and odour
which is called _fistula_, because it is rolled up like a tube.
Oribasius, physician to the Emperor Julian in the latter half of the
4th and beginning of the 5th century, describes _Cassia fistula_ as
a _bark_ of which there are several varieties, having pungent and
astringent properties (“_omnes cassiæ fistulæ vires habent acriter
exalfacientes et stringentes_”), and sometimes used in the place of
cinnamon.[856]
It is doubtless the same drug which is spoken of by Alexander
Trallianus[857] as Κασίας σῦριγζ (_casia fistula_) in connexion with
costus, pepper and other aromatics; and named by other Greek writers as
Κασία συριγγώδης (_casia fistularis_). Alexander still more distinctly
calls it also Κασία αἰγυπτία.[858]
The tree under examination and its fruit were exactly described in the
beginning of the 13th century by Abul Abbâs Annâbatî of Sevilla;[859]
the fruit, the Cassia Fistula of modern medicine, is noticed by Joannes
Actuarius, who flourished at Constantinople towards the close of the
13th century; and as he describes it with particular minuteness,[860]
it is evident that he did not consider it well known. The drug is also
mentioned by several writers of the school of Salernum. The tree would
appear to have found at an early period its way to America, if we are
correct in referring to it the Cassia Fistula enumerated by Petrus
Martyr among the valuable products of the New World.[861] The drug was
a familiar remedy in England in the time of Turner, 1568.[862]
The tree was figured in 1553 by the celebrated traveller Belon who met
with it in the gardens of Cairo, and in 1592 by Prosper Alpinus who
also saw it in Egypt.
=Description=—The ovary of the flower is one-celled with numerous
ovules, which as they advance towards maturity become separated by
the growth of intervening septa. The ripe legume is cylindrical, dark
chocolate-brown, 1½ to 2 feet long by ¾ to 1 inch in diameter, with
a strong short woody stalk, and a blunt end suddenly contracted into
a point. The fibro-vascular column of the stalk is divided into two
broad parallel seams, the dorsal and ventral sutures, running down
the whole length of the pod, The sutures are smooth, or slightly
striated longitudinally; one of them is formed of two ligneous bundles
coalescing by a narrow line. If the legume is curved, the ventral
suture commonly occupies its inner or concave side. The valves of the
pods are marked by slight transverse depressions (more evident in
small specimens) corresponding to the internal divisions, and also by
inconspicuous transverse veins.
[853] _Compositiones Medicamentorum_, cap. 4. sec. 36.
[854] _De Antidot._ i. c. 14.
[855] Noticed likewise among the commodities liable to duty at
Alexandria in the 2nd century.—Vincent, _Commerce of the Ancients_, ii.
712.
[856] _Physica Hildegardis_, Argent. 1533. 227.
[857] Libri xii. J. Guinterio interprete, Basil., 1556. lib. vii. c. 8.
[858] Puschmann’s edition (quoted in the appendix) i. 435.
[859] Meyer, _Geschichte der Botanik_, iii. (1856). 226.
[860] “Quemadmodum si ventrem mollire fuerit animus, pruna, et præcipué
Damascena adjicimus, atque quippiam feré nigræ nominatæ casiæ. Est
autem fructus ejus fistulus et oblongus, nigrum intus humorem concretum
gestans, qui haudquaquam una continuitate coaluit, sed ex intervallo
tenuibus lignosisque membranulis dirimitur, habens ad speciei
propagationem, grana quædam seminalia, siliquæ illi quæ nobis innotuit,
adsimilia.”—_Methodus Medendi_, lib. v. c. 2.
[861] _De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis_, Basil. 1521.
[862] _Herball_, part. 3. 20.
Each of the 25 to 100 seeds which a legume contains, is lodged in a
cell formed by very thin woody dissepiments. The oval, flattish seed
from ³/₁₀ to ⁴/₁₀ of an inch long, of a reddish-brown colour, contains
a large embryo whose yellowish veined cotyledons cross diagonally, as
seen on transverse section, the horny white albumen. One side is marked
by a dark line (the raphe). A very slender funicle attaches the seed to
the ventral suture.
In addition to the seeds, the cells contain a soft saccharine pulp
which in the recent state fills them up, but in the imported pods
appears only as a thin layer, spread over the septum, of a dark viscid
substance of mawkish sweet taste. It is this pulp which is made use of
in pharmacy.
=Microscopic Structure=—The bands above described running along the
whole pod, are made up of strong fibro-vascular bundles mixed with
sclerenchymatous tissue. The valves consist of parenchymatous cells,
and the whole pod is coated with an epidermis exhibiting small tabular
cells, which are filled with dark granules of tannic matter. A few
stomata are also met with. The thin brittle septa of the pod are
composed of long ligneous cells, enclosing here and there crystals of
oxalate of calcium.
The pulp itself, examined under water, is seen to consist of loose
cells, not forming a coherent tissue. They enclose chiefly granules of
albuminoid matters and stellate crystals of oxalate of calcium. The
cell-wall assumes, on addition of iodine, a blue hue if they have been
previously washed by potash lye. The seeds are devoid of starch, but
yield a copious amount of thick mucilage, which surrounds them like a
halo if they are macerated in water.
=Chemical Composition=—No peculiar principle is known to exist either
in the woody or the pulpy portion of cassia fistula. The pulp contains
sugar in addition to the commonly occurring bodies noticed in the
previous section.
=Uses=—The pulp separated from the woody part of the pods by crushing
the latter, digesting them in hot water, and evaporating the strained
liquor, is a mild laxative in common domestic use in the South of
Europe,[863] but in England scarcely ever now administered except in
the form of the well-known _Lenitive Electuary_ (_Confectio sennæ_) of
which it is an ingredient.
=Commerce=—Cassia fistula is shipped to England from the East and
West Indies, but chiefly from the latter. The pulp _per se_ has been
occasionally imported, but it should never be employed when the legumes
for preparing it can be obtained.
=Substitutes=—The pods of some other species of _Cassia_ share the
structure above described and have been sometimes imported.
[863] Thus there were imported into Leghorn in 1871, 103 tons of
_Cassia Fistula_ and Tamarinds.—_Consular Reports_, 1873, part i.
Those of _C. grandis_ L. f. (_C. brasiliana_ Lamarck), a tree of
Central America and Brazil, are of much larger size, showing when
broken transversely an elliptic outline, whose longer diameter exceeds
an inch. The valves have very prominent sutures and transverse
branching veins. The pulp is bitter and astringent.
The legumes of _Cassia moschata_ H B K.,[864] a tree 30 to 40 feet
high, growing in New Granada and known there as _Cañafistola de
purgar_, bear a close resemblance to those of _Cassia Fistula_ L.,
except that they are a little smaller and rather less regularly
straight. They contain a sweetish astringent pulp of a bright brown
hue. When crushed and exposed to the heat of a water-bath, they emit
a pleasant odour like sandal-wood. The pulp is coloured dark blackish
green by perchloride of iron.