THE DRUG INDUSTRY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4760, 6 October 1924, Page 1

THE DRUG INDUSTRY.

: * WHERE SUPPLIES COME FROM. MOST COUNTRIES CONTRIBUTE. Few people when they go to their doctor for a tonic, or to a chemist for quinine or cinnamon tablets, think whore these things come from. Yet the romance of the drug industry is not without Interest when we i effect that almost every country contributes something to our needs (says a writer in T.P.’s and CasseUJ’s Weekly). Camphor comes to us from Japan, China, and Wes* Africa ; quinine from Java and South America ; cochineal from Mexico ; vanilla from Mauritius and the Seychelles. From the slopes of the Jura and Vosges mountains, from the Pyrenees and European Turkey, we get gentian. The West Indies supply us witn ginger, while Bedouins in the territories of the Upper Nile and the natives of Tinnevelli collect our senna —and send it over. Various methods are employed for packing drugs for exportation. Aloes from the Dutch West Indian Islands usually arrive in Wooden cases in which bottled spirits have been exported. Socotrine aloes from East Africa are commonly sent out in a semi-solid condition in kegs, while Zanzibar aloes are filled while soft into goat skins, which are then packed in cases. Ol,oves come in mats made from interlaced strips of cocoanut leaves. Vanilla pods are bound in bundles and packed in tins. -Cinnamon bark comes in carefully made cylindrical bales consisting of sticks of the same length bound together and covered with sacking. Opium is packed in “chests” with the fruit of a Rumex shaken between the cakes to prevent them from sticking together. Stick liquorice is packed with bay leaves. Musk pods are wrapped singly in thin paper and packed in tins which are sometimes enclosed in silk-covered "caddies.” Menthol, is exported in tins, oils of lemon and bergamot in various sized coppers, and otto-of-rose in metal “vases”, covered with felt.