Medical properties and uses.-Cinnamon bark is astringent, cordial, and tonic. Hence it is found to be efficaceous in alvine fluxes, proceeding from a weakened and languid state of the intestines, atonic dyspepsia, and chronic nervous debility: and, when given in the form of watery infusion, it removes nausea, and checks vomiting. But the principal use of cinnamon is to cover the disagreeable taste of other remedies. The oil is a powerful stimulant and stomachic; and is used as such in cramps of the stomach, flatulent colic, hiccough, and nervous langours. It is sometimes inserted into the hollow of a decayed tooth to allay the pain of toothach.

The dose of the bark in powder is from grs, x. to Эj.: that of the oil from j. to iij. on a lump of sugar, or rubbed down with sugar as an oleo-saccharum; or with yolk of egg and syrup, so as to form a mixture with water.

Officinal preparations.-Aqua Cinnamomi, L. E. D. Spiritus Lavandula comp. E. D. Spiritus Ammonia arom. L. D. Spiritus Cinnamomi, L. E. D. Infusum Catechu compositum, L. D. Decoctum Haematoxyli, D. Tinctura Cinnamomi, L. E. D. Tine-tura Cinnamomi comp. L. Tinctura Catechu, L. E. D. Tinctura Cardamomi composita, L. D. Tinctura Lavandulae comp. L. Vinum Opii, L. D. Pulvis Cinnamomi compositus, L. E. Pulvis Aloes comp. L. Pulvis Cretae comp. L. E. D. Pulvis Kino comp. L. D.

2. Laurus Cassia.1

Officinal. Lauri Cassiae cortex; flos nondum explicatus, Edin. Laurus Cassia cortex, Dub. The bark and flower-buds of the Cassia-tree.

Syn. Of the bark:-Casse(F.)) Casia (G.), Cannellina (I.), Louranga puttay ( Tarn.), Kayu manis (Jav.), Kayu legi (Malay), Sing Rowla(Nepaul), Seleckheh (Arab.), Tej (H), Twacha (San.). Of the buds.-Fleur de la Cannelle (F.), Cassia Bloemen (D.), Tejpatka konpul (H.), Sirnagapoo ( Tarn.).

The cassia tree is a native of Malabar, Ceylon, Sumatra, and Java, and has been generally supposed to be rather a variety of the cinnamon than a distinct species of laurus; although Marsden's description of the plant2, and Gaertner's of the fruit3, afford some reason for thinking that it is properly marked as a different species. It rises fifty feet in height, and gives out, almost from the bottom, large, spreading, horizontal branches: the leaves are from four to six inches long, elliptical, narrow, pointed, entire, smooth, longitudinally nerved, of a deep green colour above, and pale grey beneath. The flowers are in axillary clusters, six together on slender flower-stalks: they are monopetalous, white, small, and divided into six stellated points. The fruit is an ovate, oblong, black berry, with a mucronated apex, standing in a bell-shaped, coriaceous, angled, unequally five or six toothed calyx: it contains a bitterish pulp, and when dried is insipid and inodorous.

Dioscoridis. It is the Dawul Kurundu of the Cingalese, the Can-nella Matto of the Portuguese, and the Wilde Canule of the Dutch.-Marshall, Phil. Trans. 1817.

2 History of Sumatra, 125.

3 De Fructibus, ii. 69. t. 92. If Gartner he correct, the fruit of the cassia is depicted, instead of that of the cinnamon, in the plate of the cinnamon plant, in Woodville's Medical Botany.

Like the cinnamon, those trees which grow in a dry soil and high exposed situation yield a superior bark to those in a moist soil and shaded spot. The larger branches and the trunk are said to be the parts of the tree barked; and the cuticle only appears to be scraped off, the cellular integument being left, which, as the bark is taken from the larger branches, is thick, spongy, and full of a slimy mucus. This plant is never decorticated at Ceylon; but the cassia sent home from Ceylon is the bark of the thick branches of L. cinnamomum, and is merely a coarse cinnamon : indeed it is probable that no cassia bark is brought to Europe; that chiefly known as such is imported from China, and is the production of a variety of L. cinnamomum. Some cassia is furnished by Sumatra, but the tree yielding it is unknown. According to Mr. Marshall1 , the Cassia-bud of commerce is the hexagonal fleshy receptacle or cupuliform calyx of the seed of the L. cinnamomum, and not the L. cassia, as supposed by the Dublin College. They are not prepared at Ceylon, but come chiefly from China, through Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.

Cassia is imported in chests, half-chests, and occasionally in quarter chests.

Qualities.-The odour of the bark termed cassia-bark is similar to that of cinnamon, but fainter; and the taste is more pungent, but less agreeable: appearing slimy when much chewed. It is of a cinnamon colour, in pieces more or less quilled, but the quills are not inserted in one another : they are about one tenth of an inch in thickness; which break with a short, close fracture, and show it to consist of two parts; the inner darker and of a fine texture, and the outer paler and somewhat spongy. When these are separated, the inner part has all the sensible qualities of real cinnamon, only more pungency, whilst the outer has scarcely either flavour or taste: and I am of opinion, that the allowing this cellular integument, from which the cinnamon is freed, to remain in the bark termed cassia, constitutes the chief cause of the l Annals of Phil. vol. x. p. 245.

difference between these two barks.1 Cassia is easily distinguished from cinnamon by its infusion striking a blue colour, with tincture of iodine. Cassia-buds are the pedi-cellated calyx, embracing the germen, which is lenticular, paler than the calyx, and smooth on its surface. They have the same odour and taste as the cinnamon bark: are of a brown colour, and resemble a nail, with a round head, which gradually terminates in a point. Both the bark and the buds yield, in distillation with water, an essential oil, similar to that of cinnamon, on which their qualities depend.

Medical properties and uses. - Cassia bark and buds are stimulant cordials; and are used in the same cases, and in the same manner, as cinnamon bark.

Officinal preparation.-Aqua Lauri Cassiae distillata, E.

3. Laurus Camphora.2 Officinal. Camphora, Lond. Edin. Dub. Camphor.

Syn. Camphre (F.), Kampfer (G.), Canfora (I.), Alcanfor (S.), Cafoor (Arab.), Kaafur, or Capoor Barroos (Malay), Cafur (H.), Curfura (San.), Car-poorura (Tarn.).

The species of laurel here designated is a native of North America, China, and Japan. It yields the camphor of commerce, but a kind of camphor comes from Sumatra, which is the production of the Dryobalanops Camphora, a tree belonging to a different order altogether from the laurel. The camphor laurel3 rises to a considerable height, is much branched, and covered with a smooth greenish bark. The leaves, which stand on long foot-stalks, are acuminate at both extremities, entire, smooth, ribbed, of a pale yellowish green colour on the upper surface, alternate on the under, glaucous, and two or three inches in length. The flowers are small, white, pedicellated, in roundish close clusters, which terminate long, axillary peduncles. The corolla consists of six small ovate, unequal petals, enclosing a tuberculated, bristled nectary, which surrounds the germen; the filaments are shorter than the corolla, and support round anthers; the germen is roundish, with a simple style and obtuse stigma. The fruit, which resembles that of the cinnamon4, is a red, oval berry, vessel for that purpose." 1 Thus refined, it is in large round cakes, or basins, about two or three inches thick, concave on one side, convex on the other, and generally perforated.

1 The rejected or third sort of cinnamon prepared in Ceylon is imported into England, and sold as cassia.

2 Tchang (Chinese).

3 Specimens of it are common in our hothouses; but they rarely flower.

4 Camphor is not the production of those plants merely from which that known in commerce is obtained, but has also been procured from the roots of the cinnamon, cassia, and sassafras laurels; from those of galangale, zedoary, ginger; and from cardamom seeds and long pepper. The essential oils of lavender, sage, thyme, peppermint, rosemary, and several other labiated plants, seated in a small yellow cup, supported in pairs on a long peduncle.