Uses—Myrrh, though much used, does not appear to possess any very important medicinal powers, and is chiefly employed on account of its bitter, aromatic properties.
Other Varieties of Myrrh—Though the myrrh of commerce exhibits some diversity of appearance, the drug-brokers and druggists of London are not in the habit of applying any special designations to the different qualities. There are however two varieties which deserve notice.
1. Bissa Bol (Bhesabol, Bysabole), Habaghadi or Hebbakhade of the Somalis, formerly called East India Myrrh.[580]
This drug is of African origin, but of the plant which yields it nothing is known. Vaughan[581] who sent a sample from Aden to one of us in 1852, was told by the natives that the tree from which it is collected resembles that affording Heera Ból or true myrrh, but that it is nevertheless distinct. The drug is exported from the whole Somali coast to Mokha, Jidda, Aden, Makulla, the Persian Gulf, India and even China.[582] Bombay official returns show that the quantity imported thither in the year 1872-73, was 224 cwt, all shipped from Aden.
Some myrrh, no doubt that from the interior of north-eastern Africa, the Habaghadi or Baisabole, finds its way by the country of the Wagadain (Ugahden or Ogadain) to the small port of Brava (Barawa, Braoua), about 1° N. lat., and to Zanzibar.[583] This is, possibly, also the “Mirra fina” which is stated, about the year 1502, by Tomé Lopez to be collected (?) in the island of “Monzambiche.”[584]
According to Vaughan, Bissa Bôl is mixed with the food given to milch cows and buffaloes in order to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their milk, and that it is also used as size to impart a bright gloss to whitewashed walls.
Miles mentions[585] that myrrh, called there hodthai, is only used in the Somali country, by men to whiten their shields (by means of an emulsion made with the drug), by women to cleanse their hair. Probably hodthai and habaghadi is one and the same thing.
Bissa Bôl differs from myrrh in its stronger, almost acrid taste and in odour, which, when once familiar is easily recognizable; fine specimens of the former have the outward characters of myrrh and perhaps are often passed off for it. A good sample of “coarse” habaghadi myrrh as sent in 1877 by Captain Hunter from Aden proved to contain but very little resin. This resin is manifestly different from that of myrrh as already shown by its paler, more reddish colour. The resin of Bissa Bôl moreover is but very sparingly soluble in bisulphide of carbon; this solution is not altered by bromine, that of true myrrh, as above stated, assuming a most intense violet colour on addition of bromine. Nor is the resin of habaghadi soluble in petroleum ether. Of the gummy substance, which is by far the prevailing constituent of this drug, a small portion only is soluble in water. These extremely marked differences no doubt depend upon a widely discrepant composition of the resins of the two kinds of myrrh as well as upon a different proportion of gum and resin. The Bissa Bôl usually seen is an impure and foul substance, which is regarded by London druggists as well as by the Banian traders in India as a very inferior dark sort of myrrh.
2. Arabian Myrrh—The drug we have mentioned at [p. 143] as collected to the eastward of Aden, is of interest as substantiating the statement of Theophrastus that both olibanum and myrrh grow in Southern Arabia.
The drug, which is not distinguished by any special name in English trade, is in irregular masses seldom exceeding 1½ inches long, and having a somewhat gummy-looking exterior. The larger lumps seem formed by the cohesion of small, rounded, translucent, externally shining tears or drops. The fracture is like that of common myrrh, but less unctuous and wants the whitish markings. The odour and taste are those of the ordinary drug. Pieces of a semi-transparent papery bark are attached to some of the lumps. We extracted the resin of a sample of this myrrh from the territory of the Fadhli, as sent to us by Captain Hunter. Its solution in bisulphide of carbon or petroleum ether was coloured by bromine as stated above, ([p. 144]) with regard to typical myrrh (Heerabol) from the Somali Country. The name applies to myrrh from the vicinity of Ras Morbat in the same region. But the resin of another kind of Arabian myrrh, for which we are likewise indebted to Captain Hunter, is not coloured when treated in the same way. This is the myrrh “Hodaidia Jebeli” from north and north-western Yenen.