Rhabarbari, Rhubarb, Da Huang 大黄

The Chinese appear to have been acquainted with the properties of rhubarb from a period long anterior to the Christian era, for the drug is treated of in the herbal called Pen-king, which is attributed to the Emperor Shen-nung, the father of Chinese agriculture and medicine, who reigned about 2700 B.C. The drug is named there Huang-Hang, yellow excellent, and Ta-huang, the great yellow. The latter name also occurs in the great Geography of China, where it is stated that rhubarb was a tribute of the province Si-ning-fu, east ward of Lake Kuku Nor, from about the 7th to the 10th centuries of our era. previously unrestricted, was limited to the government caravans which passed the frontier only at Kiachta and at Zuruchaitu, south of Nerchinsk. The latter place always remained unimportant, while Kiachta and the opposite Chinese town of Maimatchin became the staple depots of rhubarb.

As regards Western Asia and Europe, we find a root called [?] or [?], mentioned by Dioscorides as brought from beyond the Bosphorus. The same drug is alluded to in the fourth century by Ammianus Marcellinus, who states that it takes its name from the river Rha (the modern Volga), on whose banks it grows. Pliny describes a root termed Bhacoma, which when pounded yielded a colour like that of wine but inclining to saffron, and was brought from beyond Pontus. The root was subjected to special control as early as 1687-1697 by the Russian Government, who finally monopolized the trade about 1704. Caravans fitted out by the Crown alone brought the drug to Moscow, until 1762, when the caravan-trade was for a while thrown open. It was not until this period that the export of rhubarb became consider able, although the stringent regulations, established in 1736, were still maintained. The surveillance of rhubarb was exercised at Kiachtaina special court or office called the Brake, under instructions from the Russian Minister of War, by an apothecary appointed for six years, the object being to remove from the rhubarb brought for inspection all interior or spurious pieces, and to improve the selected drug by trimming, paring and boring. It was then carefully dried, and packed in chests, which were sown up in linen, and rendered impervious to wet by being pitched and then covered with hide. The drug was dis patched, but only in quantities of 1000 puds (-10,000 lb.), once a year by way of Lake Baikal and Irkutsk to Moscow, whence it was transmitted to St. Petersburg, to be there delivered to the Crown apothecaries and in part to be sold to druggists.

The drug thus described is usually regarded as rhubarb, or at least as the root of some species of Rheum, but whether produced in the regions of the Euxine (Pontus), or merely received thence from remoter countries, is a question that cannot be solved. We are indebted for these accounts chiefly to Calau, an apothecary appointed to supervise the examination of rhubarb, and who resided a long time at Kiachta. An exact account of the remarkable policy of the Russian Government in relation to that drug was also given by Von Schrbders in 1864.

It is however certain that the name Radix pontica or Rhaponticum, used by Scribonius Largus and Celsus, was applied in allusion to the region whence the drug was received. Lassen has shown that trading caravans from Shensi in Northern China arrived at Bokhara as early as the year 114 B.C. Goods thus transported might reach Europe either by way of the Black Sea, or by conveyance down the Indus to the ancient port of Barbarike. Vincent suggests that the rha imported by the first route would naturally be termed rha-ponticum, while that brought by the second might be called rha-barbamm. So long as China kept all her ports closed to foreign commerce except Canton in the extreme south, a large supply of fine rhubarb found its way to Europe by way of Russia. But the unpleasant accompaniments of the Russian supervision, which was exercised with unsparing severity, and the extreme tediousness of the land-transport, made the Chinese very ready to accept an easier outlet for their goods. Accordingly we find that the opening of a number of ports in the north of China exerted a very depressing influence on the trade of Kiachta, which was augmented by the rebellion that raged in the interior of China for some years from 1852.

We are not prepared to accept this plausible hypothesis. It receives no support from the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (circa a.d. 64), whose list of the exports of Barbarike does not include rhubarb; nor is rhubarb named among the articles on which duty was levied at the Roman custom-house of Alexandria (A.D. 176-180). On these accounts Russia in 1855 removed certain restrictions on the trade, though without abandoning the Rhubarb Office. She with drew in 1860 the custom-house to Irkutsk, and declared Kiachta a free port, while by the treaty with China of November 1800, she insisted on that country abandoning all restrictions on trade. But the over-land rhubarb trade had already been destroyed: the Chinese, tempted by the increased demand occasioned by the new trading-ports, became less careful in the collection and curing of the root, while the Russians insisted with the greatest strictness on the drug being of the accustomed quality. Hence it happened that from 1860 hardly any rhubarb was delivered at Kiachta, either for the government use or to private traders; and in 1868 the Rhubarb Office was abolished.

The terms Rheum barbarum vel barbaricum or Reu barbarum occur in the writings of Alexander Trallianus about the middle of the 6th century, and in those of Benedictus Crispus, archbishop of Milan, and Isidore of Seville, who both flourished in the 7th century. Among the Arabian writers on medicine, the younger Mesue, in the early part of the 11th century, mentions the rhubarb of China as superior to the Barbaric or Turkish. Thus the so-called Russian or Muscovitic or Crown Rhubarb, familiarly known in England as Turkey Rhubarb, a drug which for its uniformly good quality long enjoyed the highest reputation, has become a thing of the past, which can only now be found in museum collections. It began to appear in English commerce at the commencement of the last century. Alston, who lectured on botany and materia medica at Edinburgh in 1720, speaks of rhubarb as brought from Turkey and the East Indies,— ” and of late, likewise from Muscovy.”

Constantinus Africanus about the same period speaks of Indian and Pontic Rheum, the former of which he declares to be preferable. In 1154 the celebrated Arabian geographer Edrisis It has been shown that rhubarb was shipped from Syria in the 12th century. Vasco da Gama mentions it in 1497 among the exports of Alexandria. In fact, the drug was carried from the far east to Persia, whence it was brought by caravans to Aleppo, Tripoli, Alexandria, and even to Smyrna. From these Levant ports it reached Europe, and was distributed as Turkey Rhubarb; while that which was shipped direct from China, or by way of India, became known as China, Canton, or East India Rhubarb. The latter was already the more common sort in England as early as 1640.

mentions rhubarb as a product of China, growing in the mountains of Buthink— probably the environs of north-eastern Tibet near Lake Tengri Nor (or Bathang in Western Szechuen ?). Rhubarb in the 12th century was probably imported from India, as we may infer from the tariff of duties levied at the port of Aeonin Syria, in which document it is enumerated along with many Indian drugs. A similar list of A.D. 1271, relating to Barcelona, mentions Ruibarbo. In a statute of the city of Pisa called the Breve Fundticariorum, dating 1305, rhubarb (ribarbari) is classified with commodities of the Levant and India. As the rhubarb of the Levant disappeared from trade, that of Russia took not only its place but likewise its name, until the term “Turkey Rhubarb” came to be the accepted designation of the drug imported from Russia. This strange confusion of terms was not however prevalent on the Continent, but was chiefly limited to British trade.

The first and almost the only European who has visited the rhubarb-yielding countries of China is the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, who speaking of the province of Tangut says— ” … et par toutes les montagnes de ces provinces se treuve le reobarbe en grant habondance. Et illec l’achatent les marchans et le portent par le monde.” The risk and expense of the enormous land-transport over almost the whole breadth of Asia, caused rhubarb in ancient times to be one of the very costly drugs. Thus at Alexandria in 1497, it was valued at twelve times the price of benzoin. In France in 1542, it was worth ten times as much as cinnamon, or more than four times the price of saffron. At Ulm in 1596, it was more costly than opium. A German price-list of the magistrate of Schweinfurt, of 1614, shows Radix Rha Barbari to be six times as dear as fine myrrh, and more than twice the price of opium. An official English list giving the price of drugs in 1657, quotes opium as 6s. per lb., scammony 12s., and rhubarb 16s.’ (Pharmacographia, Fluckiger & Hanbury, 1879)

A sketch of the history of rhubarb would be incomplete without some reference to the various routes by which the drug has been conveyed to Europe from the western provinces of the Chinese Empire, and which have given rise to the familiar designations of Russian, Turkey and China Rhubarb.

The first route is that over the barren steppes of Central Asia by Yarkand, Kashgar, Turkestan, and the Caspian to Russia; the second by the Indus or the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and Alexandria, or by Persia to Syria and Asia Minor; and the third by way of Canton, the only port of the Chinese Empire which, previous to the year 1842, held direct communication with Europe.

In 1653 China first permitted Russia to trade on her actual frontiers. The traffic in Chinese goods was thereupon diverted from the line of the Caspian and Black Sea further north, taking its way from Tangut across the steppes of the high Gobi, and through Siberia by Tobolsk to Moscow. Thus it is mentioned in 1719 that Urga on the north edge of the Gobi desert was the principal depot for rhubarb. From the earliest times, Bucharian merchants appear to have been agents on this traffic, the producers of the drug never concerning themselves about its export.