Cacanus; its root is moderately desiccative and not pungent, also emplastic, and hence it relieves roughness of the windpipe in a linctus with wine, and when chewed like tragacanth and liquorice.
Commentary. It is not mentioned by Dioscorides, Pliny, Theophrastus, Aëtius, or any other ancient author but Galen and Paulus; nor has any one of the commentators noticed it. We are unable, therefore, to determine anything for certain respecting it. But as Dioscorides and Pliny ascribe nearly the same medicinal powers to the Cacalia as our author does to the Cacanus, it seems not improbable that they may have been identical. Our author evidently borrows from Galen.
Κάγκαμον,
Cancamum; it is the tear of an Arabian wood, resembling myrrh, fragrant, and hence used in perfumes. It has the power of extenuating fat bodies, and is detergent and deobstruent.
Commentary. Dioscorides treats of it in the portion of his work devoted to aromatics, calling it the tear of an Arabian wood, having some resemblance to myrrh, which was used in fumigations with myrrh and storax. He calls it emmenagogue; mentions that it is given in asthmatic, epileptic, and splenetic cases; says it is useful as a cleanser in diseases of the eye; but that it is most particularly applicable for fungous gums and toothache. (i, 23.) Galen has omitted it from his Mat. Med. Of the Arabians, Avicenna is the authority who has treated of it most distinctly. He calls it a gum of a bad taste which is brought from the region of the west. (This account of the country which produces it may warrant suspicion that he had confounded it with some other gum, the production of Italy or Spain.) He says of it, that some had confounded it with sandaracha (gum vernix?). In giving its medicinal virtues, he copies closely from Dioscorides (ii, 2, 382.) It is doubtful, from this imperfect description of the Cancamum, what substance it applies to; probably either to Gum anime or to Gum elemi. There seems no good ground for referring it, as some have done, to Lacca; nor to some nondescript species of the Amyris Katef, as Sprengel does. (Ad Dioscor. l. c.)
Καδμία,
Cadmia, Calamine; both kinds of it are desiccant, but that which is called Botryitis, consists of the more subtile particles, and the Placitis, of the grosser. When calamine is burnt, it becomes desiccant and detergent, without pungency, and is also useful for sores requiring to be filled up, about the eyes and in the whole body, more particularly those on softer bodies, which are more humid, for those upon harder bodies require stronger means.
Commentary. Under this head we cannot do better than in the first place copy the account of the ancient cadmia given by the learned and accurate Geoffroy. “The name Cadmia has been applied to several things. Dioscorides understood by καδμέια the recrements which arise from brass while melting in the furnace. Galen applied it to two substances, one which comes from brass (chalcos?), which is the same with the cadmia of Dioscorides; the other a native substance found in the island of Cyprus, which he terms λιθῶδης or stony. Pliny, besides the factitious cadmia of Dioscorides and Galen, mentions another by the name of Lapis ærosus, which he says was an ore out of which copper was made, and this perhaps is the same with the Cadmia lapidosa of Galen.” (ii, 2, 6.) The botryital or clustered cadmia was Tutty, or the Cadmia fornacis seu factitia. It is the Zinci Oxydum impurum. The Capnitis and Placitis were merely varieties of the same, the former being in the shape of a fine powder, collected at the mouths of the furnaces, and the latter consisting of coarser and heavier grains. The minerals from which all these preparations of cadmia were prepared, are the two varieties of calamine, now called by mineralogists “the siliceous oxide of zinc” and “the carbonate of zinc.” See Cleavland’s ‘Mineralogy’ (656, 657.) Dioscorides gives a very distinct description of the cadmia, which he recommends principally in the composition of ophthalmic remedies (v, 84.) Galen’s account of it is to the same effect, and is couched in his peculiar logical language. (De Simpl. ix.) The Arabians give a confused description of cadmia and the other mineral substances used by the Greeks in medical practice. See Avicenna (ii, 2, 163, 164); Serapion (418); Rhases (Cont. l. ult. i, 150.) For an elaborate disquisition on the cadmia of the ancients, we beg to refer to Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions.’