Pharmacopoeia of India (1868)

Pharmacopœia of India

Publication

Author	Edward John Waring, "assisted by a committee appointed for the purpose"
Language	English
Composed	1865–1868 (the committee first met on 15 March 1865)
Published	1868
Publisher	W. H. Allen & Co., publishers to the India Office
Place	London
Volumes	1 (the catalogue of vernacular names followed as a separate supplementary volume, Madras, 1869)
Total pages	xvi, 502

Cannabis Content

Volume	Vegetable materia medica, order Urticeæ
Pages	p. 216; appendix note 65, pp. 463–464
Chapter	"Cannabis sativa, Linn. Indian Hemp", an officinal article with two preparations
Plates	none
Regions documented	Habitat "Persia, extending to Western Himalaya; extensively cultivated"; the officinal drug is the flowering tops of the female plant grown in India
Varieties described	none described
Preparations	Officinal: Extract of Indian Hemp (Extractum Cannabis Indicæ); Tincture of Indian Hemp (Tinctura Cannabis Indicæ). Named in a note: gunjah, churrus, bang, subjee or sidhee, and majoon
Uses documented	Medicinal (stimulant, anodyne, sedative and antispasmodic; in tetanus, hydrophobia, delirium tremens, neuralgia, prolonged labour and other conditions)
Taxonomic significance	Enters the drug plant of India as Cannabis sativa Linn., while its two preparations keep the name Cannabis Indica

Access

Digital facsimile	View the digitised copy
Original held at	University of Glasgow Library (the copy digitised by the Wellcome Collection)

The Pharmacopœia of India is a pharmacopoeia for the Indian Medical Department, prepared under the authority of the Secretary of State for India in Council by Edward John Waring, a surgeon of the Madras army, "assisted by a committee appointed for the purpose". It was published in London in 1868 by W. H. Allen & Co., publishers to the India Office.^{: title page} Its monograph on Cannabis sativa made the flowering tops of the female plant grown in India the officinal drug. It set out an extract and a tincture made from them.

One of the committee's stated primary objects was "the introduction of the indigenous products of India into European practice in that country". It expected the change to make practitioners independent of costly imported drugs while "effecting a considerable annual saving to the State". The book is evidence of that official programme as much as of cannabis itself. The committee drew its information from the reports of medical officers and from English works on Indian materia medica, and set aside what the reports said of Indian use of the drugs.

The Pharmacopœia calls the drug and the plant "Indian Hemp" and writes the Hindustani names gunjah, churrus, bang, subjee, sidhee and majoon. This article uses cannabis for the plant and ganja, charas and bhang for the products. The book's spellings are kept in quotation.

Origins

The preface places the work 24 years after the Bengal Pharmacopoeia, issued in Calcutta "by order of Government". In the meantime some Indian drugs had entered the British Pharmacopoeia. That work, whose use was "enjoined by Government authority", had changed the names and composition of many preparations. The Secretary of State for India in Council sanctioned a pharmacopoeia for India based on the British one, with added matter of special value in India. It had two stated aims: to bring forward the indigenous drugs that "European experience" had shown to be of value, as substitutes for imported articles; and to remodel the Bengal Pharmacopoeia of 1844.

The committee had eight members. Its president was Sir J. Ranald Martin. The others were William Brooke O'Shaughnessy (by then Sir William O'Shaughnessy Brooke), Alexander Gibson, Daniel Hanbury, Thomas Thomson, John Forbes Watson, Robert Wight and Waring as editor. Gibson died on 16 January 1867, before the work was finished. A footnote explains that O'Shaughnessy had taken the surname Brooke by royal licence in 1861 and that his former name, "so well known in the records of Indian Materia Medica", was kept in the text. Robert Christison of Edinburgh read the sheets as they passed through the press. The committee first met at the India Board Office, Cannon Row, on 15 March 1865. Wight attended from June 1865 to April 1868, a journey of 60 miles (about 97 km) each time. In notes Waring supplied for Wight's obituary, he credited Wight and Thomas Thomson with the decision to arrange the work in natural order in place of the alphabetical order.^: 384–385

Method

The committee began by drawing up lists of the principal drugs and medicinal plants of India and sending them to medical officers there, asking for what they had learnt from their own practice. It combined the replies with what it called an exhaustive examination of the principal English works on Indian materia medica, the Bengal Dispensatory above all. Some reports also contained "much matter relative to the use of the different drugs by the natives". The committee could not make use of it. It deposited the documents in the India Museum so that the information would not be lost.

A list after the preface names 51 people in India who sent reports: 27 in Bengal, 18 in Madras and six in Bombay. The Bengal list includes 13 sub-assistant surgeons. The Madras list includes two native surgeons, one of them Moodeen Sheriff.^{: xiii–xiv} Sheriff's reports are cited by name in the body of the work.^: 217

The committee divided its articles into "Officinal" and "Non-officinal". The officinal class took in everything officinal in the British Pharmacopoeia, with the Indian products whose claims were "established on a solid basis". The non-officinal class held drugs that the committee thought active but less well proved. It arranged the articles by a scientific classification and not alphabetically. It added notes on properties, therapeutic uses and doses so that the book could serve as a textbook for medical students in India. Each drug carries its own preparations. A full index takes the place of separate headings for infusions, tinctures and extracts.

Sheriff had also sent a table of the vernacular names of Indian plants and drugs in 12 Indian languages. The committee resolved to append it to the Pharmacopœia and sent it to Madras to be printed under his supervision. When printing there was delayed, the committee published the Pharmacopœia without it and left the catalogue for a separate supplementary volume. It appeared at Madras in 1869 as the Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India.

The volume

The book opens with a preface, the list of reporters and a list of the articles officinal in the Pharmacopœia of India but not in the British Pharmacopoeia. The vegetable materia medica fills pp. 1–261. Products of fermentation and distillation, the animal and inorganic materia medica and the articles used in chemical testing follow. A classified catalogue of Indian medicinal products from the organic kingdom begins at p. 401 and sets them beside the British officinal articles for which they might be substituted. The appendix of numbered notes begins at p. 433 and the index at p. 469.^: contents Weights and measures follow the British Medical Council's standard.

In the classified catalogue the mark § "distinguishes officinal Indian Products contained in the British Pharmacopœia". The cannabis entries carry it.^{: 401, 406}

Cannabis in the Pharmacopœia

The monograph

The monograph stands on p. 216 in the order Urticeæ, between the fig and the non-officinal species of Ficus. It is headed "Cannabis sativa, Linn. Indian Hemp" and refers for a figure to plates 60 and 61 of vol. x of Rheede's Hortus Malabaricus. The habitat is "Persia, extending to Western Himalaya; extensively cultivated".

The officinal part is "the dried flowering tops of the female plant grown in India, from which the resin has not been removed", followed by the gloss "Indian Hemp, Gunjah, Hind." The tops consist of alternate branches carrying the remains of the flowers, small leaves and a few ripe fruits, pressed into harsh, dusky-green masses about two inches (5 cm) long with a characteristic odour. The active principle is "a bitterish acrid resin (Churrus, Hind.)".

Its properties are "primarily stimulant; secondarily anodyne, sedative, and antispasmodic". The monograph adds that narcotic, diuretic and parturifacient properties "have been assigned to it; but these require confirmation". It lists the conditions in which the drug "has been attended with benefit": tetanus, hydrophobia, delirium tremens, ebrietas, infantile convulsions and forms of neuralgia and other nervous disorders. It names further uses in cholera, menorrhagia and uterine haemorrhage, rheumatism, hay fever, asthma, functional disorders of the heart and painful, itching skin diseases. The drug had also been given in prolonged labour caused by atony of the uterus, to bring on contractions.

The extract and the tincture

Two preparations are officinal. The Extract of Indian Hemp (Extractum Cannabis Indicæ) is made by macerating one pound (454 g) of the drug in coarse powder in four pints (2.3 litres) of rectified spirit for seven days. The liquid is pressed out, most of the spirit is distilled off and the remainder is evaporated on a water bath to a soft extract. The dose is "from half a grain to two grains or more" (about 32 to 130 mg). The Tincture of Indian Hemp (Tinctura Cannabis Indicæ) is one ounce of the extract dissolved in one pint of rectified spirit, given in doses of five to 20 minims (about 0.3 to 1.2 ml) "repeated according to the effects produced". The tincture is one of those the book directs to be made with rectified spirit, where most officinal tinctures use proof spirit.^: 264

The three forms

A bracketed note closes the monograph. It names "the three principal forms in which Indian Hemp is met with in India": gunjah, "the dried flowering plant from which the resin has not been removed"; churrus, "the resinous exudation from the leaves, stems, and flowers"; and bang, subjee or sidhee, "the larger leaves and capsules without the stalks". It adds majoon, "a compound of bang, butter, sugar, flour, and milk". The note ends: "A careful chemical examination of Indian hemp and its preparations is a desideratum." Sheriff's catalogue later supplied names for the plant and four of its parts in up to 14 languages.

Christison's note

Note 65 of the appendix (pp. 463–464) answers the monograph's reference mark on the drug's properties. It prints remarks by Robert Christison "derived from his personal experience". Christison describes an alcoholic extract sent to him from Calcutta 20 years earlier that had kept its strength. He had found it "an excellent substitute" for morphia "if given in sufficient doses". He had seen two grains of it, given as a tincture, end the pain of a gallstone lodged in the bile ducts. He concludes that "for energy, certainty, and convenience, Indian Hemp is the next anodyne, hypnotic, and antispasmodic, to opium and its derivatives, and often equal to it".^: 463–464

The note reports Christison's view that the difficulty lies in the quality of the ganja from which the extract is made. A good extract needs ganja "not too old, collected in the right district, and at the right season". The ordinary resin, churrus, is "generally very impure and untrustworthy". The note then points readers to O'Shaughnessy's account in the Bengal Dispensatory (pp. 579–604), crediting him with first bringing the drug "to the notice of the Profession". It cites further papers on the drug as a hypnotic and as an aid in childbirth. It also names a paper by J. Laurence in the Madras Medical Journal (1844) on "the prevalence and ill effects of the use of Bhang in the native army".^: 463–464

Elsewhere in the volume

The classified catalogue enters the flowering tops of Cannabis sativa as an officinal Indian product under four heads: antispasmodics (p. 406); narcotics, sedatives and anodynes (p. 418); parturifacients (p. 419); and stimulants (p. 423).^{: 406, 418, 419, 423} An appendix note on the adulteration of opium lists extracts prepared from tobacco, datura and Indian hemp among the substances sometimes fraudulently mixed into it.^: 438

Two other plants are tied to cannabis in the text. Under Peganum harmala the book cites Dr. Landerer's view that the plant approaches Cannabis Indica in its action.^: 49 Hyoscyamus insanus is "a common plant of Beluchistan, where it is known by the name of Kohi bung or Mountain Hemp", with "powerfully poisonous properties".^: 180 Neither plant is cannabis.

Reception

Sheriff's vernacular catalogue, first planned as part of the work, came out at Madras in 1869. Sheriff's preface gives its purpose: with the Pharmacopœia published, European practitioners who wished to use Indian drugs would have to buy them in the bazaar. They could not do so without the local names.

George Watt's article on Cannabis sativa in A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (1889), reprinted by the House of Commons in 1893, opens its section on the drug's medicinal properties with the Pharmacopœia's classification and list of uses. It repeats the narcotic, diuretic and parturifacient properties but leaves out the Pharmacopœia's remark that they required confirmation.^: 171

Copies

The Wellcome Collection has digitised a copy from the University of Glasgow Library and offers it under the Public Domain Mark. Scans of other copies are on the Internet Archive.

See also

• A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India
• Charas
• Ganja
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission
• Robert Wight
• Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India (1869)
• Warrington s.n., Calcutta (s.d.)
• Warrington s.n., Ostindien (s.d.)

References

India Persia Western Himalayas Ganja Charas Bhang Siddhi Majum Extract Tincture Medicinal Reference work Pharmacopoeia