It is common in most parts of India and Burma, where it is highly valued for its wood, which is used for posts and for various domestic purposes, as well as for making catechu and charcoal, while the astringent bark serves for tanning. It also grows in the hotter and drier parts of Ceylon. A. Catechu abounds in the forests of Tropical Eastern Africa; it is found in the Soudan, Sennaar, Abyssinia, the Noer country, and Mozambique, but in none of these regions is any astringent extract manufactured from its wood.
2. A. Suma Kurz[924] (Mimosa Suma Roxb.), a large tree with a red heartwood, but a white bark, nearly related to the preceding but not having so extensive a geographical range. It grows in the South of India (Mysore), Bengal and Gujerat. The bark is used in tanning, and catechu is made from the heartwood.
The extract of the wood of these two species of Acacia is Catechu in the true and original sense of the word, a substance not to be confounded with Gambier, which, though very similar in composition, is widely diverse in botanical origin, and always regarded in commerce as a distinct article.
History—Barbosa in his description of the East Indies in 1514[925] mentions a drug called Cacho as an article of export from Cambay to Malacca. This is the name for Catechu in some of the languages of Southern India.[926]
About fifty years later, Garcia de Orta gave a particular account of the same drug[927] under its Hindustani name of Kat, first describing the tree and then the method of preparing an extract from its wood. This latter substance was at that period made up with the flour of a cereal (Eleusine coracana Gärtn.) into tablets or lozenges, and apparently not sold in its simple state: compositions of this kind are still met with in India. In the time of Garcia de Orta the drug was an important article of traffic to Malacca and China, as well as to Arabia and Persia.
Notwithstanding these accounts, catechu remained unknown in Europe until the 17th century, when it began to be brought from Japan, or at least said to be exported from that country. It was known about 1641 to Johannes Schröder,[928] and is quoted at nearly the same time in several tariffs of German towns, being included in the samples of mineral origin.[929]
In 1671, catechu was noticed as a useful medicine by G. W. Wedel of Jena,[930] who also called attention to the diversity of opinion as to its mineral or vegetable nature. Schröck[931] in 1677 combated the notion of its mineral origin, and gave reasons for considering it a vegetable substance. A few years later, Cleyer,[932] who had a personal knowledge of China, pointed out the enormous consumption of catechu for mastication in the East,—that it is imported into Japan,—that the best comes from Pegu, but some also from Surat, Malabar, Bengal, and Ceylon.
Catechu was received into the London Pharmacopœia of 1721, but was even then placed among “Terræ medicamentosæ.”
The wholesale price in London in 1776 was £16 16s. per cwt.; in 1780 £20; in 1793 £14 14s., from which it is easy to infer that the consumption could only have been very small.[933]
Manufacture—Cutch, commonly called in India Kát or Kut, is an aqueous extract made from the wood of the tree. The process for preparing it varies slightly in different districts.