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according to his statement, generate between the knots great humidity, like starch when it is much coagulated. The Indian carpenters, who work at these canes, find thick juice or pith, which they put on the lumbar region or reins, and in case of a headache on the forehead; it is used by Indian physicians against over-heating, external or internal, and for fevers and dysentery.' The most interesting of all accounts remains that of ODORIC OF PORDENONE (died in 1331), who, though he does not name the product and may partially confound it with bezoar, alludes to certain stones found in canes of Borneo, "which be such that if any man wear one of them upon his person he can never be hurt or wounded by iron in any shape, and so for the most part the men of that country do wear such stones upon them."2
J. A. DE MANDELSLO3 gives the following notice of tabashir: "It is certain that on the coast of Malabar, Coromandel, Bisnagar, and near to Malacca, this sort of cane (called by the Javians mambu [bamboo]) produces a drug called sacar mambus, that is, sugar of mambu. The Arabians, the Persians, and the Moores call it tabaxir, which in their language signifies a white frozen liquor. These canes are as big as the body of a poplar, having straight branches, and leaves something longer than the olive-tree. They are divided into divers knots, wherein there is a certain white matter like starch, for which the Persians and Arabians give the weight in silver, for the use they make of it in physick, against burning feavers, and bloudy fluxes, but especially upon the first approaches of any disease."
1 C. MARKHAM, Colloquies of Garcia da Orta, pp. 409-414. A list of Sanskrit synonymes for tabashir is given by R. SCHMIDT (ZDMG, Vol. LXV, 1911, P. 745).
2 YULE, Cathay, new ed. by CORDIER, Vol. II, p. 161.
3 Voyages and Travels, p. 120 (London, 1669).
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