G. pictoria Roxb., a large tree of Southern India, produces a sort of gamboge found by Christian (1846) essentially the same as that of Siam. It has been examined more recently by Broughton (1871) who states it to be quite equal to that of G. Morella. We have also been unable to find any difference between the product of G. pictoria as sent from Ceylon and common gamboge. Garcinia pictoria moreover is thought by Sir Jos. Hooker to agree with G. Morella.
History—The Chinese had intercourse with Camboja as early as the time of the Sung dynasty (a.d. 970-1127); and a Chinese traveller who visited the latter country in 1295-97, describes gamboge and the method of obtaining it by incisions in the stem of the tree.[340] The celebrated Chinese herbal Pun-tsao, written towards the close of the 16th century, mentions gamboge (Tang-hwang) and gives a rude figure of the tree. The drug is regarded by the Chinese as poisonous, and is scarcely employed except as a pigment.
The first notice of the occurrence of gamboge in Europe is in the writings of Clusius[341] who describes a specimen brought from China by the Dutch Admiral, Jacob van Neck, and given to him in 1603, under the name of Ghittaiemou.[342] It appears that shortly after this time it began to be employed in medicine in Europe, for in 1611, Michael Reuden, a physician of Bamberg, made use of it as he stated in 1613.[343] He termed the drug a “novum gummi purgans,” or also, Gummi de Peru, the latter strange name no doubt being a corruption of the above mentioned Ghittaiemou. The appellation “gummi de Peru” is met with in pharmaceutical tariffs during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Gamboge is one of the articles of the tariff of the pharmaceutical shops of the City of Frankfort in 1612: “Gutta gemou, a strong purgative dried juice, coming from the Kingdom of Patana in the East Indies.” Patana or Patani is the most populous province of the east coast of the peninsula of Malacca. The Dutch established there a factory in 1602, and were followed in 1612 by the English. The settlement was abandoned in 1700; gamboge was probably brought there from the opposite shore of the gulf of Siam.[344]
In 1615, a considerable quantity of gamboge was offered for sale in London by the East Indian Company. The entry respecting it in the Court Minute Books of the company under date October 13, 1615, is to this effect:—Three chests, one rundlet, and a basket, containing 13, 14, or 15 hundredweights, more or less, of Cambogium “a drugge unknown here,”—the use of which, was much commended as a “a gentle purge,” were offered for sale at 5s. per lb., but met with no purchaser.
Jacob Bontius,[345] a Dutch physician, resident, towards 1629, in Batavia, stated that “gutta Cambodja,” as he termed the drug, came from the country of the same name; he supposed it to be derived from an Euphorbiaceous plant.
Parkinson,[346] who was an apothecary of London and wrote in 1640, speaks of this “Cambugio,” called by some Catharticum aureum, as a drug of recent importation which arrived in the form of “wreathes or roules” yellow within and without.
In the London Pharmacopœia of 1650, gamboge is called Gutta Gamba[347] or Ghitta jemou.
The mother plant of the drug was not fully examined and figured until 1864; yet in 1677 already, Hermann, a German physician residing in Ceylon, had pointed out that it was a Garcinia.[348]
Secretion—We have examined a portion of a branch two inches in diameter of the gamboge-tree,[349] and have found the yellow gum-resin to be contained chiefly in the middle layer of the bark in numerous ducts like those occurring in the roots of Inula Helenium and other roots of the same natural order. A little is also secreted in the dotted vessels of the outermost layer of the wood, and in the pith. The wood, which is white, acquires a bright yellow tint when exposed to the vapour of ammonia or to alkaline solutions.