WOOGINOOS, or BRUCEA ANTIDYSENTERICA.
This shrub, the branch of which is before us, is a production of the greatest part of Abyssinia, especially the sides of the valleys in the low country, or Kolla. It is indeed on the north side of Debra Tzai, where you first descend into the Kolla. This drawing was made at Hor-Cacamoot, in Ras el Feel, where the Wooginoos grows abundantly, and where dysenteries reign continually, Heaven having put the antidote in the same place where grows the poison.
Some weeks before I left Gondar I had been very much tormented with this disease, and I had tried both ways of treating it, the one by hot medicines and astringents, the other by the contrary method of diluting. Small dozes of ipecacuanha under the bark had for several times procured me temporary relief, but relapses always followed. My strength began to fail, and, after a severe return of this disease, I had, at my ominous mansion, Hor-Cacamoot, the valley of the shadow of death, a very unpromising prospect, for I was now going to pass through the kingdom of Sennaar in the time of year when that disease most rages.
Sheba, chief of the Shangalia, called Ganjar, on the frontiers of Kuara, had at this time a kind of embassy or message to Ras el Feel. He wanted to burn some villages in Atbara belonging to the Arabs Jeheina, and wished Yasine might not protect them: they often came and sat with me, and one of them hearing of my complaint, and the apprehensions I annexed to it, seemed to make very light of both, and the reason was, he found at the very door this shrub, the strong and ligneous root of which, nearly as thick as a parsnip, was covered with a clean, clear, wrinkled root, of a light-brown colour, and which peeled easily off the root. The bark was without fibres to the very end, where it split like a fork into two thin divisions. After having cleared the inside of it of a whitish membrane, he laid it to dry in the sun, and then would have bruised it between two stones, had we not shewn him the easier and more expeditious way of powdering it in a mortar.
The first doze I took was about a heaped tea-spoonful in a cup of camel’s milk; I took two of these in a day, and then in the morning a tea-cup of the infusion in camel’s milk warm. It was attended the first day with a violent drought, but I was prohibited from drinking either water or bouza. I made privately a drink of my own; I took a little boiled water which had stood to cool, and in it a small quantity of spirits. I after used some ripe tamarinds in water, which I thought did me harm. I cannot say I found any alteration for the first day, unless a kind of hope that I was growing better, but the second day I found myself sensibly recovered. I left off laudanum and ipecacuanha, and resolved to trust only to my medicine. In looking at my journal, I think it was the 6th or 7th day that I pronounced myself well, and, though I had returns afterwards, I never was reduced to the necessity of taking one drop of laudanum, although before I had been very free with it. I did not perceive it occasioned any extraordinary evacuation, nor any remarkable symptom but that continued thirst, which abated after it had been taken some time.
In the course of my journey through Sennaar, I saw that all the inhabitants were well acquainted with the virtues of this plant. I had prepared a quantity pounded into powder, and used it successfully everywhere. I thought that the mixing of a third of bark with it produced the effect more speedily, and, as we had now little opportunity of getting milk, we made an infusion in water. I tried a spiritous tincture, which I do believe would succeed well. I made some for myself and servants, a spoonful of which we used to take when we found symptoms of our disease returning, or when it was raging in the place in which we chanced to reside. It is a plain, simple bitter, without any aromatic or resinous taste. It leaves in your throat and pallet something of roughness resembling ipecacuanha.
This shrub was not before known to botanists. I brought the seeds to Europe, and it has grown in every garden, but has produced only flowers, and never came to fruit. Sir Joseph Banks, president to the Royal Society, employed Mr Miller to make a large drawing from this shrub as it had grown at Kew. The drawing was as elegant as could be wished, and did the original great justice. To this piece of politeness Sir Joseph added another, of calling it after its discoverer’s name, Brucea Antidysenterica: the present figure is from a drawing of my own on the spot at Ras el Feel.
The leaf is oblong and pointed, smooth, and without collateral ribs that are visible. The right side of the leaf is a deep green, the reverse very little lighter. The leaves are placed two and two upon the branch, with a single one at the end. The flowers come chiefly from the point of the stalk from each side of a long branch. The cup is a perianthium divided into four segments. The flower has four petals, with a strong rib down the center of each. In place of a pistil there is a small cup, round which, between the segments of the perianthium and the petala of the flower, four feeble stamina arise, with a large stigma of a crimson colour, of the shape of a coffee-bean, and divided in the middle.