_Cacumina vel Summitates Sabinæ_; _Savin or Savine_; F. _Sabine_; G.
_Sevenkraut_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Juniperus Sabina_ L., a woody evergreen shrub,
usually of small size and low-growing, spreading habit, but in some
localities erect and arborescent.
It occurs in the Southern Alps of Austria (Tirol) and Switzerland (Visp
or Viège and Stalden in the Valais, also in Grisons and Vaud), and in
the adjacent mountains of France and Piedmont, ascending to elevations
of 4,000 to 5,000 feet. It is also found in the Pyrenees, Central
Spain, Italy and the Crimea; likewise in the Caucasus, where it reaches
12,000 feet above the sea-level. Eastward it extends to the Elburs
range, south of the Caspian, and throughout Southern Siberia, where it
ascends in the Balkhasch and Alatau mountains to 8,600 feet. In North
America it has been gathered on the banks of the river Saskatchewan, at
Lake Huron, in Newfoundland, and in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There
are, however, a few very closely allied species which may occasionally
have been confounded with savin.
=History=—Savin is mentioned as a veterinary drug by Marcus Porcius
Cato,[2324] a Roman writer on husbandry who flourished in the second
century B.C.; and it was well known to Dioscorides (under the name of
βρἀθυ) and Pliny. The plant, which is frequently named in the early
English leech-books written before the Norman Conquest,[2325] may
probably have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. Charlemagne,
A.D. 812, ordered that it should be cultivated on the imperial farms of
Central Europe. Its virtues as a stimulating application to wounds and
ulcers are noticed in the verses of Macer Floridus,[2326] composed in
the 10th century.
=Description=—The medicinal part of savin is the young and tender green
shoots, stripped from the more woody twigs and branches. These are
clothed with minute scale-like rhomboid leaves, arranged alternately in
opposite pairs. On the younger twigs they are closely adpressed, thick,
concave, rounded on the back, in the middle of which is a conspicuous
depressed oil gland. As the shoots grow older the leaves become more
pointed and divergent from the stem. Savin evolves, when rubbed or
bruised, a strong and not disagreeable odour. The blackish fruit or
_galbulus_ resembling a small berry, ²/₁₀ of an inch in diameter,
grows on a short recurved stalk, and is covered with a blue bloom. It
is globular, dry, but abounding in essential oil, and contains 1 to 4
little bony nuts.
To mycologists, _Juniperus Sabina_, at least in the cultivated state,
is interesting on account of the parasitic fungus _Podisoma fuscum_
Duby, the mycelium of which produces, on the leaves of the pear-trees,
the so-called _Roestelia cancellata_ Rebentisch.
=Chemistry=—The odour of savin is due to an essential oil, of which
the fresh tops afford 2 to 4 per cent., and the berries about 10 per
cent. Examined in a column 50 millimetres long it was found to deviate
the ray of polarized light 27° to the right, the oil used having been
distilled by one of us in London from the fresh plant cultivated at
Mitcham. The same result was obtained from the oil abstracted ten years
previously from savin collected wild on the Alps of the Canton de Vaud,
Switzerland. We find that, by the prolonged action of the air, if
the oil is kept in a vessel not carefully closed, the rotatory power
after the lapse of years is greatly reduced. Savin oil, according to
Tilden (1877), yields a small amount of an oil boiling at 160°, which
answers to the formula C₁₀H₁₆O. The greater part of the oil was found
by that chemist to boil above 200° C. Tilden asserts that no terpene is
present in the oil of savin; we have not been able to obtain from it a
crystallized hydrochloride. Savin tops contain traces of tannic matter.
[2324] Cap. lxx. (_Bubus medicamentum_).
[2325] Cockayne, _Leechdoms, etc., of Early England_, ii. (1865) xii.
[2326] Choulant, _Macer Floridus de viribus herbarum_, Lipsiæ,
1832. 48.... “Duplum si desunt _cinnama_ poni in medicamentis iubet
_Oribasius_ auctor.”
=Uses=—Savin is a powerful uterine stimulant, producing in overdoses
very serious effects. It is but rarely administered internally. An
ointment of savin, which from the chlorophyll it contains is of a fine
green colour, is used as a stimulating dressing for blisters.
=Substitutes=—There are several species of juniper which have a
considerable resemblance to savin; and one of them, commonly grown
in gardens and shrubberies, is sometimes mistaken for it. This is
_Juniperus virginiana_ L., the _Red Cedar_ or _Savin_ of North America.
In its native country it is a tree, attaining a height of 50 feet
or more, but in Britain it is seldom more than a large shrub, of
loose spreading growth, very different from the low, compact habit
of savin.[2327] The foliage is of two sorts, consisting either of
minute, scale-like, rhomboid leaves like those of savin, more rarely
of elongated, sharp, divergent leaves a quarter of an inch in length,
resembling those of common Juniper. Both forms often occur on the
same branch. The plant is much less rich in essential oil than true
savin,[2328] for which it is sometimes substituted in the United States.
The foliage of _Juniperus phœnicea_ L., a Mediterranean species,
has some resemblance to savin for which it is said to be sometimes
substituted,[2329] but it is quite destitute of the peculiar odour of
the latter. The specific name of the former alludes to its _red_ fruit,
from ϕοινίκιος, purple.
[2327] We have examined numerous herbarium specimens (wild) of _J.
virginiana_ and _J. Sabina_, but except difference of stature and
habit, can observe scarcely any characters for separating them as
species. The fruit-stalk in _J. virginiana_ is often pendulous as in
_J. Sabina_. Each plant has two forms,—arboreous and fruticose.
[2328] This we ascertained by distilling under precisely similar
conditions 6 lbs. 6 oz. of the fresh shoots of each of the two plants,
_Juniperus Sabina_ and _J. virginiana_: the first gave 9 drachms of
essential oil, the second only ½ a drachm. The latter was of a distinct
and more feeble odour, and a different dextrogyre power. In America
the oil of _J. virginiana_ is known as “_Cedar Oil_,” and used as a
taenifuge. It contains a crystallizable oxygenated portion. This oil
however is afforded by the wood. Red Cedar wood from Florida is stated
by Messrs. Schimmel & Co. (see p. 306) to afford as much as 4 to 5 per
cent. of that oil.
[2329] _Bonplandia_, x. (1862) 55.
_Monocotyledons._