MATERIA MEDICA AND THERAPEUTICS.
On a neiv source of Kino. By Robert Christison, M. D., V. P.
R. S. E., Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh.—
In a letter of the 20th of last July, from a merchant of Moulmein,
Mr. R. S. Begbie, son of Dr. Begbie of this city, I was informed that
a species of kino—which seemed to him to present the physical and
chemical properties of the commercial variety of that drug in the
English home market, and which had been ascertained by a medical
friend at Moulmein to possess also its medical virtues—might be largely
obtained from a tree abounding in the adjacent provinces. Mr. Begbie
added, that he believed “ a small quantity had been sent some years
ago to England; but as an article of export generally it has not yet
been shipped.” This notice was accompanied by a small specimen,
which is now produced, and which is large enough to allow of its
principal properties being accurately ascertained.
As the inquiries I have made lead me to suppose that the article in
question is of a very fine kind, and that the fact of its production near
Moulmein, and probably over a considerable part of the neighboring
province of Pegue, is not hitherto known in Europe, I beg to present
to the Pharmaceutical Society the following description of it, and the
reasons which induce me to think that it is obtained from the identical
tree which yields in Malabar the present commercial kino of European
trade.
The small portion sent by Mr. Begbie consists partly of little angu-
lar fragments; but there are several larger masses which are portions
of cylinders, about half an inch in diameter, apparently moulded by
collecting the juice in reeds. These have externally a greyish, striated
surface, most unlike that of the broken fragments of commercial kino.
They are easily frangible; and the broken pieces have exactly the ap-
pearance of ordinary kino, except that they are even blacker, and more
glassy by reflected light; and by transmitted light, though opaque
when of very moderate thickness, they are of a splendid cherry-red color
in very thin fragments. They aro easily reduced to fine powder, which
has a dark, dirty, lake tint. Their taste is very slightly bitter and in-
tensely astringent.
Cold water acts more quickly on this kino than on the kino
of commerce, gradually dissolving a very large proportion of it, and
forming a deep, cherry-red, astringent solution; and there is left a
small proportion of greyish flocculent matter, which is slowly soluble
in a great measure in boiling water, and which appears to be analogous
to the insoluble variety of gum called bassorin. Boiling water dissolves
this kino almost entirely, and the solution, when cold, continues nearly
transparent for at least an hour; but afterwards it becomes slightly
turbid, and a scanty, flocculent precipitate slowly subsides. Both the
hot and cold solutions yield, when much diluted, a deep, olive-green
precipitate with the tincture of sesquichloride of iron; and when the
solution is concentrated, a dirty grey precipitate is formed so abundant-
ly that the whole fluid becomes a thick pulpy mass. A boiling solution
in twenty-five parts of water forms with the iron test a pulp too thick to
flow, which is one of the characters assigned in the Edinburgh Phar-
macopoeia to true officinal kino. But I find, further, that a solution in
even seventy-five parts of cold water, has a beautiful, intense cherry-red
color, and forms with sesquichloride of iron, in the course of an hour,
a pulp so thick as to flow only sluggishly.
On comparing these characters with a fine specimen of kino of home
trade, and also with a specimen collected in the neighborhood of Goom-
soor, in Mysore, by Dr. Cleghorn, of the Madras Medical Service, when
he was Surgeon of the surveying corps of that country, I find that the
last two are identical, with the; single exception, that Dr. Cleghorn’s
specimen is somewhat redder when seen in bulk; and that the Moul-
mein kino is blacker, more vitreous in lustre, rather more easily soluble
in cold water, and with rather less flaky residue; and when the cold
solution is diluted to the strength of one in seventy-five, it requires
rather more sesquichloride of iron to throw down all its tannin, and
consequently the precipitate forms with the water a somewhat firmer
This kino dissolves, with only a trace of flaky residue, in rectified
spirit, which forms an intense cherry-red tincture of very pure astringent
taste. The quantity in my possession is scarcely sufficient to allow of a
fuller examination of its chemical properties and composition. But its
physical characters, the action of water, and the properties of the
watery solution, even as I have shortly indicated them, are enough to
prove that the Moulmein kino is identical in nature with the present
kino of home trade, and in point of quality somewhat superior. I
have no doubt, from its taste, and the action of the iron test, that an
analysis will prove the presence of a largei* proportion of tannin.
It does not absolutely follow, even from the exact correspondences
now mentioned, that the Moulmein kino is derived from the same bo-
tanical source with the present officinal kino of Europe. The officinal
sort has been accurately referred by the separate researches of Dr. Gib-
son, Dr. Pereira, and Dr. Royle, to the Pterocarpus Marsupium, of
Roxburgh, a fine forest tree abounding in the hills of Mysore and other
parts of the Indian Peninsular. But the Butea frondosa also yields a
fine kino, which I have shown in my Dispensatory to be scarcely distin-
guishable in chemical properties from the officinal kind.
Mr. Begbie, however, has fortunately supplied me with a description
of the Moulmein tree, sufficient to identify it with the true kino tree of
Mysore. “ It is,” said he, “ one of the commonest trees in the ad-
joining provinces, and is called by the Burmese Padouk. It grows to
a great size and height. Immediately before the rainy season it is
covered with long pendant yellow flowers, of an exceedingly sweet odor,
like that of jessamine. The tree flowers three times, at intervals of
perhaps a week or ten days; each blow lasting about twenty-four hours.
The wood is in color like mahogany, and exceedingly heavy. It is used
in India for making gun-carriages; and at present we are preparing some
for the London market, in executing an order, I fancy, for the Royal
Artillery. It makes most beautiful furniture. The gum exudes slightly
without incision; but on a cut being made into the tree, it bleeds most
freely.” This description is not sufficiently botanical to enable me to
determine the tree from its characters in botanical works. But on sub-
mitting Mr. Begbie’s letter to Dr. Gibson, Conservator of the Forests
of Bombay, who very lately visited Edinburgh, that gentlemen at once
recognizes his old acquaintance of the Indian woods, the Pterocarpus
Marsupium; which he was one of the first to discover to be the true
source of kino, by observing that, when his companions on a shooting
party cut their names into the bark of a tree beside which they had
been resting, a red juice freely exuded, and concreted into a dark, as-
tringent cum, like the kino of commerce.—London Pharm. Journ.,
Feb. 1853.