Fagine

A few days, browsing in Webster's third dictionary of 1971, I came across a very short entry for 'fagine', telling me that it was a volatile narcotic principle present in the husks of beech nuts. Was it the sort of thing that long hairs with beads and living in woodland communes went in for? Or druids on Midsummer Eve?

The first edition of OED did not recognise the word at all. Nor did the 1949 edition of the British Pharmaceutical Codex, despite 1949 being my birth year and so a very good year. A substantial and well made book, about three inches thick. Although I did learn that from the point of view of molecular composition, codeine was almost identical to morphine - but presumably not the same effect, not the same uses. Also that in 1949 anyway, the strongest variety of opium, maybe 16% morphine, came from what was then Yugoslavia.

Various beech nut products were available from health food suppliers, like that snapped above. But that did not advance matters much. I dare say pigs of old ate them too.

All very puzzling, but pursuing the matter this afternoon, Google turned up the suggestion that fagine was more or less a synonym for choline. More precisely: 'an alkaloid obtained from the nuts of the common beech, Fagus sylvatica, later identified as choline'. Where alkaloid seems to be a rather imprecise term meaning 'a class of nitrogenous organic compounds of plant origin which have pronounced physiological actions on humans. They include many drugs (morphine, quinine) and poisons (atropine, strychnine)'.

From there I get to the people at reference 1, and the MeSH (medical subject headings) and the National Library of Medicine in the US. Where it is confirmed that fagine is a synonym for choline, or at the very least, closely related. This despite the fact that reference 2 seems to say nothing about beech nuts nor narcotics. And MeSH itself would probably be repay study: what appears to be a structured, controlled vocabulary intended to be used to apply key words to medical papers, key words which would help researchers find them.

While I had forgotten that I had taken an interest in this very same choline a couple of years ago, resulting in reference 3. With it seeming possible at that time that giving vulnerable women choline supplements during pregnancy might reduce the incidence of schizophrenia in their children. Not something that I have followed up since.

The last piece of the puzzle turned over today, was trying to clarify the difference between the British Pharmacopoeia of reference 4 the the British Pharmaceutical Codex already mentioned and the first edition of which can be seen at reference 5. I believe that both are still in existence, and the story seems to be the the latter is more inclusive, including all kinds of stuff which does not make the cut for the former, but which medical people still want to know about. But the Codex, despite an illustrious history, no longer has any official standing.

References

Reference 1: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/intro_entry.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=choline.

Reference 4: https://www.pharmacopoeia.com/what-is-the-bp.

Reference 5: https://archive.org/details/b21687390/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater.