_Resina Draconis_; _Dragons Blood_; F. _Sang-dragon_; G. _Drachenblut_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Calamus Draco_[2505] Willd. (_Dæmonorhops Draco_
Mart.)—This is one of the Rotang or Rattan Palms, remarkable for their
very long flexible stems, which climb among the branches of trees by
means of spines on the leafstalk. The species under notice, called in
Malay _Rotang Jernang_, grows in swampy forests of the Residency of
Palembang and in the territory of Jambi, in Eastern Sumatra, and in
Southern Borneo, which regions furnish the dragon’s blood of commerce.
It is said to occur also in Penang and in various islands of the Sunda
chain.
=History=—The substance which is mentioned by Dioscorides under the
name of Κιννάβαρι, as a costly pigment and medicine brought from
Africa, and which is also described by Pliny who distinguished it from
minium, was certainly the resin called _Dragon’s Blood_. It was not
however that of the Rotang Palm, _Calamus Draco_, or even of any tree
of the Indian Archipelago, but was on the contrary a production of the
island of Socotra (see p. 675).
Dragon’s blood is, we believe, not named by any of the earlier voyagers
to the India islands. Ibn Batuta, who visited both Java and Sumatra
between A.D. 1325 and 1349, and notices their producing benzoin (see
p. 404), cloves, camphor, and aloes-wood, is silent about dragon’s
blood. Barbosa, whose intelligent narrative (A.D. 1514) of the East
Indies[2506] is full of reference to the trade and productions of the
different localities he visited, states that aloes and _dragon’s blood_
are produced in Socotra, but makes no mention of the latter commodity
as found at Malacca, Java, Sumatra, or Borneo.
The fact we wish to prove is corroborated by the accounts of early
commercial intercourse between the Chinese and Arabs recently published
by Bretschneider.[2507] From the 10th to the 15th century there was
carried on between these nations a trade, the objects of which were not
only the productions of the Arabian Gulf and countries further north,
but also those of the Indian Archipelago. One of the islands with which
the Arabs and Persians carried on a great commerce was Sumatra, whence
they obtained the precious camphor so much valued by the Chinese,
but not, so far as it appears, the resin dragon’s blood. As to the
productions brought from Arabia they are enumerated as Ostriches,
Olibanum, Liquid Storax, Myrrh, and _Dragon’s Blood_, besides a few
other articles not yet determined. It is worthy of remark that the
Chinese are still the principal consumers of dragon’s blood, though
like the rest of mankind they have to content themselves with the
plentiful drug of Sumatra and Borneo, instead of the more ancient sort
produced in Socotra.
[2505] Beautifully figured by Blume, _Rumphia_, ii. (1836) tab. 131-132.
[2506] _Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar_ (Hakluyt
Society), 1866. 30. 191-197.
[2507] _Knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the Arabs, etc._, 1871.
The first clear account of the production of the resin in India is that
given by Rumphius, who in his _Herbarium Amboinense_[2508] describes
the process by which it is collected at Palembang.
=Production=—The fruit of _Calamus Draco_, which is produced in
panicles in great profusion, is globose and of the size of a large
cherry, clothed with smoothed downward-overlapping scales. These scales
are sub-quadrangular, thick and shell-like, marked with a longitudinal
furrow; the largest, which are found towards the middle of the fruit,
are 2 lines long by 3 broad. At maturity the fruit is covered with an
exudation of red resin, which encrusts it so abundantly that the form
of the scales can hardly be seen.
The resin, which is naturally friable, is collected by gathering the
fruits, and shaking or beating them in a sack, by which process it
is soon separated. It is then sifted to remove from it scales and
other portions of the fruit. By exposure to the heat of the sun or
in a covered vessel to that of boiling water, the resin is so far
softened that it can be moulded into sticks or balls, which are
forthwith wrapped in a piece of palm leaf. It is thus that the best
dragon’s blood, or _jernang_, is obtained. An inferior quality is got
by boiling the pounded fruits in water, and making the resin into
a mass, frequently with the addition of other substances by way of
adulteration. The foregoing is the account of the manufacture of the
drug given by Blume.[2509]
[2508] Pars. v. (1747) 114-115. tab. 58.
[2509] _Rumphia_, iii. (1847) 9. tab. 131. 132.
=Description=—Dragon’s Blood is found in commerce chiefly in two forms,
known respectively as _Reed_ and _Lump_.
1. _Reed Dragon’s Blood_ (Dragon’s Blood in sticks, _Sanguis draconis
in baculis_). Some of fine quality purchased in London in 1842 is
in sticks 13 to 14 inches in length, and ¾ to 1 inch in diameter,
neatly wrapped in palm leaf, secured by 8 or 9 transverse bands of
some flexible grass. The average weight of each stick, including
the enveloping leaf, is five ounces. The resin has evidently been
wrapt up while soft, as the sticks are furrowed longitudinally
by pressure of the surrounding leaf. The smooth surface is of an
intense blackish-brown; when seen in thin splinters the resin appears
transparent, and of a pure and brilliant crimson. The fractured surface
looks resinous and rough, is a little porous, and contains numerous
particles of the scales of the fruit. Rubbed on paper it leaves a red
mark of not very splendid tint. Heated with alcohol it left 20 per
cent. of pulverulent residue consisting chiefly of vegetable matter.
Sticks of smaller size are more common.
2. _Lump Dragon’s Blood_ (_Sanguis draconis in massis_) is imported
in large rectangular blocks or irregular masses. From the fine _Reed
Dragon’s Blood_, just described, it differs in containing a larger
proportion of remains of the fruit, including numerous entire scales.
Hence it has a coarser fracture, and the fractured surface is less
intense in tint. Its taste is slightly acrid. Exhausted with alcohol it
leaves a residue amounting in the specimen we tested to 27 per cent.
Dragon’s blood is abundantly soluble in the usual solvents of resins,
namely, the alcohols (even in dilute spirit of wine), benzol,
chloroform, bisulphide of carbon, and the oxygenated essential oils,
as that of cloves. The residue left after the evaporation of these
liquids is amorphous and of the original fine red colour. The drug is
likewise dissolved by glacial acetic acid as well as by caustic soda;
the latter solution on addition of an excess of acid yields a dingy
brown, jelly-like precipitate, which on drying turns dark red like
the original drug. In ether dragon’s blood is sparingly soluble, and
still less so in oil of turpentine; but in the most volatile portions
of petroleum, the so-called petroleum ether we find it to be entirely
insoluble. It has a slightly sweetish and somewhat acrid taste; melts
at about 120° C., evolving the aromatic but irritating fumes of benzoic
acid; boiled with water the resin becomes soft and partially liquid.
=Chemical Composition=—Dragon’s blood is a peculiar resin, which
according to Johnston[2510] answers to the formula C₂₀H₂₀O₄. By heating
it and condensing the vapour an aqueous acid liquid is obtained,
together with a heavy oily portion of a pungent burning taste and
crystals of benzoic acid. The composition of these products has not yet
been thoroughly ascertained, but the presence of acetone, _Toluol_,
C₆H₅(CH₃), _Dracyl_ of Glénard and Boudault (1844), and _Styrol_,
C₈H₈ (_Draconyl_), has been pointed out,[2511] the latter perhaps due
to the existence in the drug of metastyrol (p. 274), as suggested by
Kovalewsky.[2512] Both these hydrocarbons are _lighter_ than water; yet
we find that the above oily portion yielded by dry distillation sinks
in water, a circumstance possibly occasioned by the presence of benzoic
alcohol, C₆H₅(CH₂OH).
As benzoic acid is freely soluble in petroleum ether it ought to be
removed from the drug by that solvent: on making the experiment we
got traces of an amorphous red matter, a little of an oily liquid,
but nothing crystalline. Cinnamic acid, on the other hand, is always
present, according to Hirschsohn (1877). As to the watery liquid, it
assumes a blue colour on addition of perchloride of iron, whence it
would appear to contain phenol or pyrogallol rather than pyrocatechin
(p. 196).
By boiling dragon’s blood with nitric acid, benzoic, nitro-benzoic, and
oxalic acids are chiefly obtained, and only very little picric acid.
_Hlasiwetz_ and _Barth_ melted the drug with caustic potash, and found
among the products thus formed phloroglucin (p. 243), para-oxybenzoic,
protocatechuic, and oxalic acids, as well as several acids of the fatty
series. Benzoin yields similar products.
=Commerce=—Dragon’s blood is shipped from Singapore and Batavia. Large
quantities are annually exported from Banjarmasin in Borneo to these
places and to China.[2513]
=Uses=—In medicine, only as the colouring agent of plasters and tooth
powders; in the arts, for varnish.
=Adulteration=—Dragon’s blood varies exceedingly in quality,[2514] of
which the principal criterion regarded by the dealers is _colour_. Some
of the inferior sorts make only a dull brick-red mark when rubbed on
paper, and have an earthy-looking fracture. The sticks moreover do not
take the impression of the enveloping leaf as when they are more purely
resinous. A sample of inferior Reed Dragon’s Blood afforded us 40 per
cent. of matter, insoluble in spirit of wine.
[2510] _Phil. Trans._ 1839. 134; 1840. 384.
[2511] Gmelin, _Chemistry_, xvii. (1866) 387.
[2512] Gmelin, _Chemistry_, xvii. 388; also _Annalen der Chemie_, cxx.
(1861) 68.
[2513] Low, _Sarawak, its inhabitants and productions_, 1848. 43.
[2514] The present price, £3 to £11 per cwt., sufficiently indicates
this.
Other sorts of Dragon’s Blood.
_Dragon’s Blood of Socotra_—We have already stated (p. 672) that the
_Cinnabar_ mentioned by Dioscorides was brought from Africa. That the
term really designated dragon’s blood seems evident from the fact that
the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea,[2515] written _circa_
A.D. 54-68, names it (Κιννάβαρι) as a production of the island of
Dioscorida, the ancient name of Socotra.
The Arabians, as Abu Hanifa and Ibn Baytar,[2516] describe dragon’s
blood as brought from Socotra, giving to the drug the very name
by which it is known to the Arabs at the present day, namely,
_Dam-ul-akh-wain_. Barbosa (1514) as well as Giovanni di Barros[2517]
mention it as a production of the island; and in our own times it
has been noticed by Wellstead,[2518] Vaughan,[2519] and A. von
Kremer.[2520] It is now but little collected. Vaughan states, as well
as Von Wrede, that the tree is found in Hadramaut and on the east coast
of Africa. The latter statement is also made in letters (1877, 1878),
with which we were favoured by Captain Hunter of Aden and Hildebrandt
of Berlin (see pages 140 and 141), by the latter of whom we were
presented with a photographic sketch of the tree growing in the Somali
country, at elevations of from 2500 to 5500 feet, and called there
Moli. It is _Dracæna schizantha_ Baker,[2521] a tree attaining 8 metres
in height. The resin has an acidulous taste, and is, according to
Hildebrandt, not exported, but occasionally eaten by the Somalis. The
tree from which dragon’s blood is collected in Socotra is, according to
Capt. Hunter, _Dracæna Ombet_ Kotschy.
The _Drop Dragon’s Blood_, of which small parcels imported from Bombay
or Zanzibar occasionally appear in the London market, is however this
drug. It is in small tears and fragments, seldom exceeding an inch in
length, has a clean glassy fracture, and in thin pieces is transparent
and of a splendid ruby colour. From Sumatran dragon’s blood it may be
distinguished by not containing the little shell-like scales constantly
present in that drug, and by not evolving when heated on the point of a
knife the irritating fumes of benzoic acid.
_Dragon’s Blood of the Canary Islands_—This substance is afforded by
_Dracæna Draco_ L., a liliaceous tree[2522] resembling a _Yucca_,
of which the famous specimen at Orotava in Teneriffe has often been
described on account of its gigantic dimensions and venerable age.[2523]
[2515] _Voyage of Nearchus and Periplus of the Erythrean Sea_,
translated by Vincent, Oxford, 1809. 90.
[2516] Sontheimer’s ed. i. 104. 426. ii. 117.
[2517] _L’Asia_, sec. deca. Venet. 1561. p. 10. a.
[2518] _Travels in Arabia_, Lond. 1838. ii. 449.
[2519] _Pharm. Journ._ xii. (1853) 385.
[2520] _Aegypten_, Leipzig, 1863.
[2521] On Hildebrandt’s East African Plants, _Journ. of Bot._ xv.
(1877) 71.
[2522] Histological observations on the structure of the stem,
accompanied by excellent figures, will be found in a memoir by
Rauwenhoff (_Bijdrage tot de kennis van Dracæna Draco_, pp. 55. tabb.
5) in the _Verhand. d. Kon. Acad. v. Wetensch., afd. Natuurk_. x. 1863.
[2523] It was destroyed in 1867 by a hurricane.
On the exploration of Madeira and Porto Santo in the 15th century,
dragon’s blood was one of the valued productions collected by the
voyagers, and is named as such by Alvise da ca da Mosto in 1454.[2524]
It is also mentioned by the German physician Hieronymus Münzer, who
visited Lisbon about 1494.[2525]
The tree yields the resin after incisions are made in its stem; but so
far as we know the exudation has never formed a regular and ordinary
article of commerce with Europe. It has been found in the sepulchral
caves of the aboriginal inhabitants.
The name _Dragon’s Blood_ has also been applied to an exudation
obtained from the West Indian _Pterocarpus Draco_ L., and to that of
_Croton Draco_ Schlecht.; but the latter appears to be of the nature of
kino, and neither substance is met with in European commerce.