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Show 336 DRAGON'S BLOOD TREE. HISTORY. It is a native of the East Indies, where it commonly grows in woods nearrivers, and has tong supplied Europe with walking-canes, which have usually been imported by the Dutch. MEDICAL VIRTUE. Several trees are known'to abound with a red resinous juice, which is obtained by wounding the bark, and is called dragon’s blood, as the Pterocarpus Draco or Pterocarpus officinalis of Jacquin, the Dracena Draco, the Dalbergia monetaria, and the red Pterocarpus sontolinus. Besides these, many of the Indian the of woods, while growing, pour forth through the fissures n, bark a blood-coloured juice, forming a resinous concretio to which the name dragon’s ‘blood has been affixed. ‘This drug, however, is chiefly obtained fromthe fruit of the Calamus Rotang, and is procured at the Molucca islands, Java, andother parts of the Kast Indies, according to Kempfer, by exposing this fruit to the steam of boiling water, which softeus the external shell, and forces out the resinous fluid, whichis then into closed in certain leaves of the reed kind, and hung in theair sime by is Draconis Sanguis the obtaining dry. Another way of ply boiling the fruit in water, inspissating the strained decoction, a and drying it in the same manner as the former. In Palimbani covered observed often is fruit ripe the of surface the external with the resin, which is rubbed off by shaking the fruit together sun’s in a bag; when this is done, the drug is melted by the Well Diseds bd Ye LILIUM CANDIDUM. heat, and formed into globules, which are folded in leaves this is deemed the purest kind of dragon’s blood ; and that whichis found next in goodness is procured by taking the fruit, which is bruising after and, bag, the of to bestill distended with resin, out the drug it, exposing it to the sun, or boiling it gently in water: off ang skimmed is and surface, the then appears floating upon shaped into small cakes. It is employed in hemorrhages and fluxes. bale b Class VI. Hexandria. Order I. Monogynia. ney Gen, six-petalled, campanulate, campanls olla six-petalled, a nectar Corolle for Cuan: dinalline threads, SPEc, * C OHAR. i with a longitu- y: Capsule having its valves connected with netted Leagues scx : Wedves scattered: Corolla campanulate, smooth within, eg DESCRIPTION. Roor bulbous. Stem upright, rising about three feet. Leaves ae smooth, without footstalks. Flowers large, white, ‘inating the stem in clusters upon short peduncles. The cotolla is bell. é shaped, composedofsix petals of a beautiful white colour, mies ew ablong, divided into three cells, containing ish seeds of a semicircular shape. 4umerous |