_Cortex Granati_; _Pomegranate Peel_; F. _Ecorce de Grenades_; G.
_Granatschalen_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Punica Granatum_ L., a shrub or low tree, with
small deciduous foliage and handsome scarlet flowers. It is indigenous
to North-western India, and the counties south and south-west of the
Caspian to the Persian Gulf and Palestine, and grows wild in the hills
of Western Sindh in elevations of 4000 feet, in Balutchistan to 6000
feet, also in the east flank of Soliman range. The trunk is short,
rarely over 20 feet high. The tree has long been cultivated, and is
now found throughout the warm parts of Europe, and in the subtropical
regions of both hemispheres.
=History=—The pomegranate has been highly prized by mankind from
the remotest antiquity, as is shown by the references to it in the
Scriptures,[1109] and by the numerous representations of the fruit in
the sculptures of Persepolis and Assyria,[1110] and on the ancient
monuments of Egypt.[1111] It was probably introduced into the south
of Italy by Greek colonists, and is named as a common fruit-tree by
Porcius Cato[1112] in the 3rd century B.C. The peel of the fruit was
recognized as medicinal by the ancients, and among the Romans was in
common use for tanning leather,[1113] as it still is in Tunis.
[1108] Figured in Bentley and Trimen, part 20.—The fruit of this
species is easily distinguished, being crowned by 5-calyx lobes.
[1109] _Exodus_ xxviii. 33, 34; _Numbers_ xx. 2; _Deut._ viii 8;
_Cant._ iv. 13; viii. 2.
[1110] Layard, _Nineveh and its Remains_, ed. 5, ii. (1849) 296.
[1111] Wilkinson, _Ancient Egyptians_, ii. (1837) 142.
[1112] Nisard’s edition, Paris, 1877, capp. 7. 127. 133.
[1113] See also Hehn, _Kulturpflanzen_, Berlin, 1877, 206.
=Description=—The fruit of the pomegranate tree is a spherical,
somewhat flattened and obscurely six-sided berry, the size of a common
orange and often much larger, crowned by the thick, tubular, 5-to
9-toothed calyx. It has a smooth, hard, coriaceous skin, which when the
fruit is ripe, is of a brownish yellow tint, often finely shaded with
red. Membranous dissepiments, about 6 in number meeting in the axis of
the fruit, divide the upper and larger portion into equal cells. Below
these a confused conical diaphragm separates the lower and smaller
half, which in its turn is divided into 4 or 5 irregular cells. Each
cell is filled with a large number of grains, crowded on thick spongy
placentæ, which in the upper cells are parietal but in the lower appear
to be central. The grains, which are about ½ an inch in length, are
oblong or obconical and many-sided, and consist of a thin transparent
vesicle containing an acid, saccharine, red, juicy pulp, surrounding an
elongated angular seed.
The only part of the fruit used medicinally is the peel, _Cortex
Granati_ of the druggists, which in the fresh state is leathery. When
dry as imported, it is in irregular, more or less concave fragments,
some of which have the toothed, tubular calyx still enclosing the
stamens and style. It is ⅒ to ¹/₂₀ of an inch thick, easily breaking
with a short corky fracture; externally it is rather rough, of a
yellowish-brown or reddish colour. Internally it is more or less brown
or yellow, and honey-combed with depressions left by the seeds. It has
hardly any odour, but has a strongly astringent taste.
=Microscopic Structure=—The middle layer of the peel consists of large
thin-walled and elongated, sometimes even branched cells, among which
occur thick-walled cells and fibro-vascular bundles. Both the outer
and the inner surface are made up of smaller, nearly cubic and densely
packed cells. Small starch granules occur sparingly throughout the
tissue, as well as crystals of oxalate of calcium.
=Chemical Composition=—The chief constituent is tannin, which in an
aqueous infusion of the dried peel produces with perchloride of iron
an abundant dark blue precipitate. The peel also contains sugar and a
little gum. Dried at 100° C. and incinerated, it yielded us 5·9 per
cent. of ash.
=Uses=—Pomegranate peel is an excellent astringent, now almost obsolete
in British medicine. Waring[1114] asserts that when combined with opium
and an aromatic, as cloves, it is a most useful remedy in the chronic
dysentery of the natives of India, as well as in diarrhœa.
[1114] _Pharm. of India_, 1868. 93. 447.