The chief consumption of Liquid Storax would appear to be in India and China. In the fiscal year 1866-67, Bombay imported 319 cwt. from the Red Sea. Liquid Storax is seldom seen in the London drug-sales.
Uses—Liquid Storax, which the British Pharmacopœia directs to be purified by solution in spirit of wine, is an ingredient in a few old-fashioned preparations but is hardly ever prescribed on its own account. It is stated to be expectorant and stimulant, and useful in chronic bronchial affections. It has been recommended by Pastau, Berlin (1865), as an external application for the cure of scabies, for which purpose it is mixed with linseed oil and now largely used.
Adulteration—The drug is occasionally mixed with sand, ashes, and other substances; these would be detected by solution in spirit of wine, as well as by the microscope.
Allied Substances.
Styrax Calamita (Storax en pain Guibourt)—The substance that now bears this name is by no means the Styrax Calamita of ancient times, but is an artificial compound made by mixing the residual Liquidambar bark called Cortex Thymiamatis ([p. 273]), coarsely powdered, with Liquid Storax in the proportions of 3 to 2. It is at first a clammy mass, acquiring after a few weeks an appearance of mouldiness, due to minute silky crystals of styracin. It is usually imported in wooden drums, and has a very sweet smell. When the bark is scarce, common sawdust is substituted for it, while qualities still inferior are made up with the help of olibanum, honey, and earthy substances. This drug is manufactured at Trieste, Venice and Marseilles.
Several other odoriferous compounds, of which Liquid Storax appears to be the chief ingredient, are made in the East and may still be found in old drug warehouses.[1052]
Resin of Styrax officinalis L.; True Storax—This was a solid resin somewhat resembling benzoin, of fragrant, balsamic odour, held in great estimation from the time of Dioscorides and Pliny down to the close of the last century. It was perhaps the “storace odorifero” exported in the 12th century from Pantellaria[1053] and Sicily. The drug was obtained from the stem of Styrax officinalis L. (Styraceæ), a native of Greece, Asia Minor and Syria, now found also in Italy and Southern France. This plant when permitted to grow freely for several years, forms a small tree, in which state alone it appears to be capable of affording a fragrant resin. But in most localities it has been reduced by ruthless lopping to a mere bush, the young stems of which yield not a trace of exudation. True storax has thus utterly disappeared.
Professor Krinos of Athens has informed us (1871) that about Adalia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, a sort of solid storax obtained from S. officinalis is still used as incense in the churches and mosques. The specimen of it which he has been good enough to send us, is not however resin, but sawdust; it is of a pale cinnamon-brown, and pleasant balsamic odour. By keeping, it emits an abundance of minute acicular crystals (styracin?). The substance is interesting in connection with the statement of Dioscorides, that the resin of Styrax is adulterated with the sawdust of the tree itself, and the fact that the region where this sawdust is still in use is one of the localities for the drug (Pisidia) which he mentions.
Resin of Liquidambar styraciflua L.—a large and beautiful tree, native of North America from Connecticut and Illinois southward to Mexico and Guatemala. In the United States, where it is called Sweet Gum, the tree yields from natural fissures or by incision, small quantities of a balsamic resin, which is occasionally used for chewing. We have before us an excellent sample of it collected for Messrs. Wallace Brothers of Statesville, N. Carolina.[1054]
In Central America this exudation is far more freely produced; an authentic specimen from Guatemala in our possession is a pale yellow, opaque resin of honey-like consistence, becoming transparent, amber-coloured and brittle by exposure to the air. It has a rather terebinthinous, balsamic odour. In the mouth it softens like benzoin or mastich, and has but little taste. Another specimen also from Guatemala, a thick, fluid oleo-resin, of a golden brown hue, was contributed to the Paris Exhibition in 1878.