Chondrile, Gum Succory, being a species of Endive, is bitterish, and is therefore so far more desiccative than it.
Commentary. Without doubt it is the Chondrilla juncea, or Gum Succory. It produces a gum similar to Lactucarium, for which it is still cultivated in Lemnos. See Lindley (Veg. Kingd. 708.) Dioscorides describes another species which is supposed to be Apargia tuberosa. Dioscorides describes accurately the gum of the former species which he compares to mastich, and says of it that when applied on a linen cloth with myrrha to the size of an olive it is emmenagogue; that along with natron it cleanses mild leprosy; that the gum is used for glueing the hairs of the eyelashes; that the fresh root does the same when a needle is dipped into it and applied to the hairs; that it is beneficial in the bites of the viper; and that its juice is an astringent of the bowels. He describes the second species as being also glutinous. (ii, 160.) Galen and the other Greek authorities treat only of the former species, and that in very brief terms. Neither of them are described either by Hippocrates or Celsus. We find difficulty in discovering traces of it in any of the works of the Arabians, except Ebn Baithar (i, 395.) The Chondrilla juncea is still not wholly unknown in the shops. See Gray (Suppl. to Pharmacop. 63.)
Χόνδρος,
Chondrus, is like wheat, but more glutinous than it.
Commentary. In the First Book we have explained its nature. ([Vol. I, 123.]) It would appear to have been the article now called Farro, being prepared from the spelt wheat, exactly as pearled barley is from barley. See Gray (Suppl. to Pharmacop. 16.)
Χρυσοκόλλα,
Chrysocolla; one kind of it is found in metal mines, and another is prepared in a mortar of red copper with a pestle of the same, it being triturated with the urine of a boy not come to puberty during the heat of the dog days. It therefore is detergent, having discutient and desiccative powers greater than those of the kind found in metal mines, so that it consumes flesh without being pungent. It therefore agrees with ill-conditioned ulcers. By burning it you may render it less pungent.
Commentary. In order to understand this very complicated subject, it will be necessary in the first place to give an exposition of what the ancients themselves have written upon it. Dioscorides writes thus of the Chrysocolla: “The best is the Armenian, which is of an intense leek colour; the second in quality is the Macedonian; and then the Cyprian, of which the kind that is pure must be selected; but that which is full of earth and stones must be rejected. The aforesaid article is to be worked thus: Having pounded it, throw it into a mortar, and having poured in water, rub strongly with the flattened hand to the mortar; then allowing it to settle, strain; and pouring in more water, again rub, and do this alternately until it becomes clean and pure; then having dried it in the sun, lay past for use. But if you wish to burn (calcine?) it, do so in the following manner: Having triturated it sufficiently, put it into a pan, place upon the coals, and do otherwise as we previously said in the former cases. The chrysocolla has the power of deterging ulcers, repressing and cleansing fungous flesh; is styptic, calefacient, mildly septic, with a certain amount of pungency. It belongs to the class of medicines which excite vomiting, and which may prove fatal to life.” (v, 104.) This chrysocolla is evidently the same as that which Theophrastus has described as “being found in great quantity in gold mines and the parts around them.” (De Lapid. 47.) Now we may here say at once that every person conversant with mineralogy, must recognise the chrysocolla, described above, as being the mineral called “common copper-green” by Jameson, being an impure carbonate of copper. For a clear description of it, see Cleaveland (Mineralogy, p. 570.) This, it will be remarked, is the only substance to which Dioscorides applies the name of Chrysocolla; but in a preceding chapter, treating of the varieties of verdigris, he says, “There is a certain kind of verdigris made by the goldsmiths, by means of a mortar and pestle, of Cyprian copper and the urine of a young person, with which they solder gold.” (v, 92.) Now to this variety of the verdigris, as we shall soon see, the name Chrysocolla (from its being used in soldering gold) was also applied by the writers subsequent to Dioscorides. Thus Pliny (H. N. xxxiii, 26, 27, 28) first gives a very elaborate description of the true chrysocolla; and then in the following chapter he briefly notices the other kind, which he says was also called “santerna,” and was prepared from Cyprian verdigris, the urine of a boy, with the addition of nitrum (soda?) pounded in a Cyprian mortar with Cyprian copper or bronze. This, he adds, forms a solder to gold. This, however, he does not say was ever used in medicine. The former kind or true chrysocolla of Dioscorides, he says was used in medicine for cleansing wounds along with wax and oil, and also in a dry powder; that it was given in a linctus with honey for orthopnœa and angina; that it was used as an emetic; was added as an ingredient to collyria for specks on the eyes, and to green plasters for relieving pain and contracting cicatrices. This chrysocolla, he says, in conclusion, the physicians call acesis (a term, by the way, synonymous with medicinal), and was different from the orobitis which he had previously described as being artificially tinged with a herb called by him “lutum,” meaning thereby, we suppose, woad, or the Isatis tinctoria. (l. c.) Galen describes the two kinds together, and treats of their medicinal powers as follows: This medicine, chrysocolla, is one of those that consume the flesh, and is not strongly pungent; but it is moderately discutient and desiccant. Wherefore some call only the fossil by this name, but some also the substance which is prepared in a bronze (copper?) mortar with a copper pestle by means of the urine of a boy, which some value according to the differences of the verdigris. But it is better to prepare it in summer, or at least in hot weather, pounding the urine in the mortar. And it answers more excellently if the bronze, of which you make the mortar, be red, and the pestle too, for more is thus rubbed off by the turning round of the pestle when the bronze is of a softer nature. This medicine is most suited to malignant sores, both by itself and mixed with other substances. He concludes by saying of the fossil chrysocolla, that the more desiccative the less stimulant it is, as being so much the more attenuated; and that when burnt (calcined), it becomes still more attenuated. (De Simpl. ix.) It is clear from this statement that Galen included under his list of Simples both the fossil chrysocolla and the kind prepared from verdigris. Aëtius merely abridges the account of the chrysocolla given by Galen. (ii, 81.) And as Oribasius professedly copies his descriptions of the fossils used in medicine from Dioscorides, we need not say anything further of his account of chrysocolla, than that it coincides entirely with that of Dioscorides. (Med. Coll. xiii.) Celsus ranks it with the corrosive (v, 6) and the caustic substances. (v, 8.) We now turn to the Arabians. Avicenna, in the first place, treats of this substance under the name of chrysocolla, of which he describes two species; the one, the artificial, made with the urine of a boy in a bronze mortar, as already explained; the other the fossil, of which he says he will now treat. He describes its general characters, namely, that it is abstergent, caustic, septic, and so forth. Referring to Dioscorides and Galen, he calls it an emetic and astringent medicine, and good for malignant sores. (ii, 2, 358.) He there refers to sect. 696, where he treats of tincar, of which he says that it consists of two kinds, the fossil and the factitious, the latter of which is called the gold-solder (capistrum auri). It is useful, he says, in toothache and carious teeth. Averrhoes describes it under the names of Laçacolaap, i. e. Consolidatura auri; in Arabic, Cumbar. He gives exactly the same account of the two species as Galen. He says the factitious kind is best prepared in a mortar of red bronze with the urine of a young person; which species is more efficacious than the other. (Collig. v, 43.) Serapion in the portion of his work devoted to minerals, writes thus of Tincar, i. e. Borax. “Ebn Amram says of it, it is of the species of salts, and is found with the taste of baurach (nitrum?), and has some bitterness; and it is either fossil or factitious. And the fossil is in the banks of the sea; it is hot, dry, and subtile; is useful in toothache, and kills the worm in them, and in stopping the throbbing in them it has wonderful powers.” Rhases and Aben Mesuai say of it, that the basis (radix) of it is the urine of a boy, we mean of the factitious, and it is the solder of gold (chrysocolla.) It would appear to be the chrysocolla which is described by Haly Abbas (Pract. ii, 48, 495), but we must admit ourselves incapable of interpreting correctly his meaning as expressed in the barbarous translation of his works. Ebn Baithar first treats of chrysocolla under the name of Tankâr in an extract from the works of Ebn Amram which we have given above as quoted by Serapion. (i, 214.) And again in the 2d volume (434), he first gives descriptions of the chrysocolla in extracts from Dioscorides and Galen, and concludes with the remark that some people called it the tankar chrysocolla, but that the chrysocolla of Dioscorides and Galen was a totally different article from the tankar. Rhases gives merely extracts from Dioscorides and Galen. (Cont. l. ult. i, 25.) He calls it adhesio auri. From what has been stated above, we now draw the following conclusions regarding the matters treated of under this head: 1. That the mineral known by the names of “copper green,” “mountain green,” “native carbonate of copper,” was the true chrysocolla of Dioscorides, the said term signifying Gold solder. 2. That Dioscorides further describes a preparation of verdigris which was also used for soldering gold, to which the name chrysocolla was likewise applied by Pliny, Galen, and others. 3. That under the names of Tincal, Tankâr, and Borax, the Arabians described a species of salt, which most probably was our Sodæ Biboras, to which they sometimes applied the name chrysocolla from its being used in the soldering of gold, but their best authorities (as for example, Avicenna, and Ebn Baithar) were well aware that this borax was a totally different substance from the chrysocolla of Dioscorides. The name borax is probably a corruption of Baurach, which is the term applied by the Arabians to the nitrum of the Greeks and Romans, that is to say, natron, or soda. If the reader will take the trouble to read what has been written on the chrysocolla of the ancients by many learned men in modern times, as, for example, Alston, Hill, Geoffroy, Quincy, Sprengel, and Kidd, he will be the better able to judge whether or not we have succeeded in illustrating what has always been considered a very obscure subject.