Glycyrrhiza, Licorice, Gan Cao

From Pharmacographia Indica, Dymock, 1890
‘Liquorice grows wild in Arabia, Persia, Turkistan and Afghanistan, and has been introduced in to the Punjab and Sind. Kinneir observed it growing abundantly near Basra, and Aitchison found it growing abundantly all over the Badghis and throughout the Harirud and Khorasan districts. In Persia glass-bottle-makers use the wood for melting their materials, as they say it gives a greater heat than any other kind of fuel. The root, in Sanskrit called Yashtimadhu and Madhuka, must have been known to the Hindus from a very early date, as it is mentioned by Susruta. Hindu works describe it as demulcent, cooling and useful in cough, hoarseness, &c. It is also recommended as a flavouring agent, and enters into the composition of many external cooling applications.

Abu Hanifeh describes Sus as a well-known plant, the expressed juice of which is an ingredient in medicine. He says the roots are sweet and the branches bitter. El Mutarrizi in the Mughrib states that the leaves are put into the beverage called nabid to make it strong. The modern Arabs call the root Irk-es-sus, and make a strong infusion of it which they drink. The dried juice is called Rab-es-sus; it is made by the Arabs, Turkomans, and Persians at Yezd. In Persia the liquorice plant is called Mehak and Mazhu.

The author of the Makhzan-el-Adwiya gives a lengthy description of the plant, and directs the root to be decorticated before it is used. He says that the Egyptian is the best, next that of Irak, and then Syrian. The root is considered hot, dry and suppurative, demulcent and lenitive, relieving thirst and cough, and removing unhealthy humours, also diuretic and emmenagogue, useful in asthma and irritable conditions of the bronchial passages. Ibn Sina recommends the decoction in cold colic; it is also dropped into the eyes to strengthen the sight. A poultice made of the leaves is said to be a cure for scald head, and stinking of the feet or armpits. Muhammad bin Ahmad and Yohanna bin Serapion recommend the seeds as being the most active part of the plant’.

From Pharmacographia, Fluckiger & Hanbury, 1879
1. Licorice root
‘Theophrastus a in commenting on the taste of different roots (3rd cent. B.C.) instances the sweet Scythian root which grows in the neighbourhood of the lake Maeotis (Sea of Azov), and is good for asthma, dry cough and all pectoral diseases,— an allusion unquestionably to liquorice. Dioscorides, who calls the plant [?] notices its glutinous leaves and purplish flowers, but as he describes the pods to be in balls resembling those of the plane, and the roots to be sub-austere as well as sweet, it is possible he had in view Glycyrrhiza echinata L. as well as G. glabra.

Roman writers, as Celsus and Scribonius Largus, mention liquorice as Radix dulcis. Pliny, who describes it as a native of Cilicia and Pontus, makes no allusion to it growing in Italy.

The cultivation of liquorice in Europe does not date from a very remote period, as we conclude from the absence of the name in early mediaeval lists of plants. It is, for instance, not enumerated among the plants which Charlemagne ordered (a.d. 812) to be introduced from Italy into Central Europe; nor among the herbs of the convent gardens as described by Walafridus Strabus, abbot of Reichenau, lake of Constance, in the 9th century; nor yet in the copious list of herbs contained in the vocabulary of Alfric, archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century.

On the other hand, liquorice is described as being cultivated in Italy by Pierode Crescenzi] of Bologna, who lived in the 13th century. The cultivation of the plant in the north of England existed at the close of the 16th century, but how much earlier we have not been able to trace.

As a medicine the drug was well known in Germany in the 11th century, and an extensive cultivation of the plant was carried on near Bamberg, Bavaria, in the 16th century, so that in many of the numerous pharmaceutical tariffs of those times in Germany not only Glycyrrhizoe succus creticus, seu candiacus, seu venetus is quoted, but also expressly that of Bamberg.

The word Liquiritia, whence is derived the English name Liquorice (Lycorya in the 13th century), is a corruption of Glycyrrhiza, as shown in the transitional mediaeval form Gliquiricia. The Italian Regolizia, the German Lacrisse or Lakriz, the Welsh Lacris, and the French Reglisse (anciently Requelice or Recolice) have the same origin’.

2. Licorice Juice
‘Inspissated liquorice juice was known in the time of Dioscorides, and may be traced in the writings of Oribasius and Marcellus Empiricus in the latter half of the 4th century, and in those of Paulus Aegineta in the 7th. It appears to have been in common use in Europe during the middle ages. In A.D. 1264, “Liquorice” is charged in the Wardrobe Accounts of Henry III.; and as the article cost 3d. per lb.,or the same price as grains of paradise and one-third that of cinnamon, we are warranted in supposing the extract and not the mere root is intended. Again, in the Patent of Pontage granted by Edward L, A.D. 1305, to aid in repairing the London Bridge, permission is given to lay toll on various foreign commodities including Liquorice. A political song written in 1436 makes mention of Liquorice as a production of Spain, but the plant is not named as an object of cultivation by Herrera, the author of a work on Spanish agriculture in 1513. Saladiuus, who wrote about the middle of the 15th century, names it among the wares kept by the Italian apothecaries ; and it is enumerated in a list of drugs of the city of Frankfort written about the year 1450.

Dorsten, in the first half of the 16th century, mentions the liquorice plant as abundant in many parts of Italy, and describes the method of making the Succus by crushing and boiling the fresh root. Mattioli states that the juice made into pastilli was brought every year from Apulia, and especially from the neighbourhood of Monte Gargano. Extract of liquorice was made at Bamberg in Germany, where the plant is still largely cultivated, as early as 1560.’

Preparation of Licorice Juice
‘This is conducted on a large scale in Spain, Southern France, Sicily, Calabria, Austria, Southern Russia (Astracan and Kasan), Greece (Patras) and Asia Minor (Sokia and Nazli, near Smyrna); but the extract with which England is supplied is almost exclusively the produce of Calabria, Sicily and Spain.

The process of manufacture varies only by reason of the amount of intelligence with which it is performed, and the greater or less perfection of the apparatus employed.  As witnessed by one of us at Rossano in Calabria in May, 1872, it may be thus described from notes made at the time. The factory employs about 60 persons, male and female. The root having been taken from the ground the previous winter, is stacked in the yard around the factory; it is mostly of the thickness of the fingers, with here and there a piece of larger size up to a diameter of nearly 2 inches; some of it sprouting.

As required, the root is taken within the building and crushed under a heavy millstone to a pulp, water-power being employed. It is then transferred to boilers and boiled with water over a naked fire. The decoction is run off and the residual root pressed in circular bags like those used in the olive-mills. The liquor which is received into cisterns below the floor is then pumped up into copper pans, in which the evaporation is conducted also over the naked fire— even to the very last, care being taken by constant stirring to avoid burning the extract. The extract or pasta is removed from the pan while warm, and taken in small quantities to an adjoining apartment where a number of women are employed in rolling it into sticks. It is first weighed into portions, each of which the woman seated at the end of a long table tears with her hand into about a dozen pieces. These are passed to the women sitting next who roll them with their hands into cylindrical sticks, the table on which the rolling is done being of wood, and the pasta moistened with oil to prevent its adhesion to the hands. Near the further end of the table are some frames made of marble or metal, clean and bright, so arranged as to bring the sticks when rolled in them to the proper length and thickness. When thus adjusted, they are carefully ranged on a board, and a woman then stamps them with the name of the manufacturer. Lastly the sticks laid on boards are stacked up in a room to dry.

In some establishments the vacuum pan has been introduced for the inspissation of the decoction. At the great manufactory of Mr. A.O. Clarke at Sokia near Smyrna, all the processes are performed by steam power.’ (Pharmacographia, Fluckiger & Hanbury, 1879)