The common gamboge of Ceylon is produced by a plant which Dr. Graham was led to view as a species of a new genus under the name of Hebradendron Gambogoides. A very different species, the Garcinia Gambogia, of Roxburgh, once supposed to produce gamboge, and indeed actually confounded by Linnæus with the true gamboge tree of Ceylon, he has proved not to produce gamboge at all.
This substance is also obtained from several other plants, as the Mangostana Gambogia (Gaertner), Hypericwm bacciferum and Cayanense, natives of the East Indies, Siam and Ceylon, whence it is imported in small cakes and rolls or cylindrical twisted masses. Its composition is as follows: number 1 being an analysis by Professor Christison of a commercial specimen from Ceylon; number 2 of a fine sample of common ditto:—
| 1 | 2 | |
| Resin, or fatty acid | 78.84 | 74.8 |
| Coloring matter | 4.03 | 3.5 |
| Gum | 12.59 | 16.5 |
| Residue | 4.54 | 5.2 |
| 100.00 | 100.0 |
The average imports of gamboge into the port of London, during the past five or six years, have been from 400 to 500 chests of one to two cwt. each.
Gentian.—The yellow gentian root (Gentiana lutea) is the officinal species, and a native of the Alps of Austria and Switzerland.
The stems and roots of G. amarella and campestris, British species, and G. cruciata, purpurea, punctata, &c., are similar in their effects, having tonic, stomachic, and febrifugal properties. So has G. kurroo of the Himalayas. The root is generally taken up in autumn, when the plant is a year old. It is cut longitudinally into pieces of a foot or a foot and a half long. They are imported into this country in bales from Havre, Marseilles, &c., and a good deal comes from Germany. In 1839, 470 cwts. were entered for home consumption.
Chiretta is the herb and root of Agathotes Chirayta, Don; Gentiana Chirayta, Fleming; or Ophelia chirayta, a herbaceous plant, growing in the Himalaya mountains about Nepaul and the Morungs.
Ipecacuan.— Cephælis Ipecacuanhæ, Richard, yields the ipecacuan of the shops. The plant is met with in the woods of several Brazilian provinces, as Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio Janeiro. It is found growing in moist shady situations, from 8 to 20 degs. south latitude. The roots, which are the officinal part, are contorted, knotty and annulated, and about the thickness of a goose quill.
Besides this brown or gray annulated ipecacuan, there are spurious kinds, such as the striated or black Peruvian, the produce of Pyschotria elliptica, and other species; and white or amylaceous ipecacuan, furnished by Richardsonia scabra, an herbaceous perennial, native of the provinces of Rio Janeiro and Minas Geraes. Manettia glabra or cordifolia, also furnishes ipecacuan in Buenos Ayres. It is imported into this country from Rio in bales, barrels, bags, and serons, and the average annual imports in the eight years ending in 1841 were 10,000 lbs. In 1840, the shipments from Rio were as much as 20,000 lbs.
Castelnau states, that one expert hand can gather 15 lbs. of the ipecacuan root in a day, which will fetch in Rio one dollar per pound. He estimates that, from 1830 to 1837, not less than 800,000 lbs. of this drug were exported from the province of Matto Grosso to Rio.