Pepper (36 page)

“the more fish we had about the ship, of which we caught large quantities; dorados, albacores, and likewise bonitos, sharks, and others; which afforded a most welcome and agreeable refreshment to the seamen.”
Ibid., Vol. I, p. 17.

“the most delicious seafish that is caught. It is long and flat, and covered with very small scales…”
Ibid., Volume 1, pp. 17–23.

“These animals were about the size of a spaniel, with long tails, which, when they ran, they turned upwards.…”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies
, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798, Vol. I, pp. 132–133.

“… for their superstitious belief in the transmigration of souls after death, makes them think that these creatures, in particular, are the receptacles of human souls.”
Ibid., p. 133.

“When he walked, he let the whole hang loose, without seeming to be in the least incommoded.”
Ibid., p. 134.

“Dodoes, a strange kinde of fowle, twice as bigg as a Goose, that can neither flye nor swymm…”
Peter Mundy's quote appears in Fuller, p. 66.

“covered with Downe, having little hanguing wings like short sleeves, altogether unuseffull to Fly withal…”
Mundy,
The Travels of Peter Mundy,
(Vol. III, Part II, The Hakluyt Society, 1919), and reprinted in 1967, p. 353.

“… ships began to call and man came to stay, hogs and dogs, cats and rats, sailors and settlers began…”
Alfred North-Coombes,
The Vindication of François Leguat
, Organisation Normale des Entreprises Limitée, Port Louis, Mauritius, p. 8.

“After having been forc'd to leave my Native Country, with so many thousands of my Brethren, to abandon my small Inheritance…” The Voyage of François Leguat of Bresse to Rodriguez, Mauritius, Java, and the Cape of Good Hope,
Edited and Annotated by Captain Pasfield Oliver (The Hakluyt Society, 1891) p. lxxxvi.

“The Females are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown; I call them fair…”
Ibid., p. 78.

A little over one hundred years later, bones were finally discovered on Rodrigues that confirmed Leguat's story, including the existence of a little round bony mass that existed under the feathers of the wings in both male and female solitaires.
See North-Coombes, pp. 60–61.

“… such a plenty of Land-Turtles in this Isle…”
Leguat, p. 71.

“This Flesh is very wholsom, and tastes something like Mutton…”
Ibid., p. 71.

“We all unanimously agreed, 'twas better than the best Butter in Europe.…”
Ibid., p. 71.

A party landing on Aldabra in 1878 took three days to find one animal.
See D. R. Stoddart, J. F. Peake, C. Gordon, and R. Burleigh, “Historical Records of Indian Ocean Giant Tortoise Populations,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series, B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 286, No. 1011,
The Terrestrial Ecology of Aldabra
(Vol. 3, 1979), p. 155.

“… behold these really wondrous tortoises…”
Herman Melville, “The Encantadas,” in
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories
(Viking Penguin, 1986) pp. 75–79.

Nine: Medicinal Pepper

“Many physiological effects of black pepper, its extracts or its major active principle, piperine, have been reported in recent decades.”
Krishnapura Srinivasan, “Black Pepper and its Pungent Principle—Piperine: A review of Diverse Physiological Effects,”
Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition,
Volume 47, Issue 8, November 2007, p. 735–748.

Scientists in the United States, Britain, and Italy are now testing pepper's potency as an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial agent …
There is no way to provide a complete list of the hundreds of scientific articles on pepper's physiological effects, but interested readers may find the following articles of interest. For an evaluation of pepper's ability to stimulate proliferation of melanin-producing cells in the skin, and thereby provide a potential treatment for vitiligo, see Faas L., Venkatasamy R., Hilder R.C., Young A.R., Soumyanath A., “In vivo evaluation of piperine and synthetic analogues as potential treatments for vitiligo using a sparsely pigmented mouse model,”
British Journal of Dermatology
2008, May; 158(5):941–50. For suggestions that pepper might be helpful in alleviating the joint stiffness, pain, and inflammation of arthritis, see J. S. Bang, et al., “Anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic effects of piperine in human interleukin-1-beta-stimulated fibroblast-like synoviocytes and in rat arthritis models.”
Arthritis Research and Therapy
11 R49 (2009). As an analgesic see McNamara, Fergal N., Randall, Andrew, Gunthorpe, Martin J., “Effects of piperine, the pungent component of black pepper, at the human vanilloid receptor,”
British Journal of Pharmacology
144 (6): 781–790, March 2005; and Szallasi, Arpad, “Piperine: Researchers discover new flavor in an ancient spice,”
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences
26 (9): 437–439 September 2005.

… inhaling the aroma of black pepper oil …
Ebihara, Takae, et al. “A randomized trial of olfactory stimulation using black pepper oil in older people with swallowing dysfunction,”
Journal of the American Geriatric Society
54 (9): 1401–1406, Sept. 2006.

 … the property that is attracting the most attention is piperine's ability to act as a sort of booster, or biological enabler, of other medicines.
Personal e-mail communication with Krishnapura Srinivasan.

House of Lords issued a report saying that there wasn't evidence to support Ayurvedic medicine's role in diagnosis and treatment of disease.
See Bodeker, Gerard, “Evaluating Ayurveda,” in
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine,
Volume 7, Number 5, 2001, p. 389.

… studies involving some 166 plant species …
See Sarah Khan and Michael J. Balick, “Therapeutic Plants of Ayurveda: A Review of Selected Clinical and Other Studies for 166 Species,” ibid. pp. 405–515.

… some seven hundred drugs derived from pepper, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and other spices, were described by a physician named Sashruta the Second in about 500 B.C.
See Susheela Raghavan Uhl,
Handbook of Spices, Seasonings, and Flavorings,
(Lancaster, PA.: Technomic Pub. Co., 2000) p. 154.

In South Asia pepper is also widely employed in a broad array of folk remedies, especially as a treatment for diarrhea.
Krishnapura Srinivasan, “Black Pepper (
Piper nigrum
) and its Bioactive Compound, Piperine,” p. 56, in
Molecular Targets and Therapeutic Uses of Spice: Modern Uses for Ancient Medicine,
editors Bharat B. Aggarwal and Ajaikumar B. Kunnumakkara (World Scientific Publishing, 2009).

The ability of piperine to boost the effectiveness of a particular treatment for cancer is the focus of a research project underway at Fox Chase Cancer Center …
Telephone interview with Vladimir Kolenko. For more information about the Fox Chase project, see the Web site for the American Institute for Cancer Research.

It was this property that led Bharat B. Aggarwal, chief of the Cytokine Research Section at MD Anderson … to explore the feasibility of using curcumin as an anticancer agent.
Karolyn A. Gazella, “Pioneering Biochemist Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D., of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, on Discovering Novel and Effective Cancer Treatments,”
Natural Medicine Journal
1(4), December 2009.

… more than eight hundred compounds …
See
www.nf.kb.org
, a Web site devoted to nuclear factor Kappa B and maintained by Boston University biologist Thomas Gilmore.

 … using piperine to improve the bioavailability of curcumin …
See Anand P, Kunnumakkara AB, Newman RA, and Aggarawal BB, “Bioavailability of curcumin: problems and promises,”
Mol Pharm
. 2007 Nov–Dec; 4(6): 807–18.

In a small laboratory study published in 2009 by researchers at the University of Michigan, each compound…” inhibited the renewal, or generation, of certain stem cells in the breast that may be the source of cancer cells.”
Kakarala, Madhuri, et al., “Targeting breast stem cells with the cancer preventive compounds curcumin and piperine,”
Breast Cancer Research Treatment,
07, November 2009.

Rats and mice fed up to one hundred times more black pepper than is normally consumed in the Indian diet did not suffer any ill consequences; their gastrointestinal tracts did just fine.
E-mail with K. Srinivasan. Asked if pepper could be toxic, he responded: “I have absolutely no anxiety about the toxicity of piperine. Even if we were to consume black pepper one hundred times what Indians are normally consuming in their diets, it is absolutely safe.”

 … “limited application” as a preservative, especially in comparison to other spices, such as turmeric and garlic.
E-mail communication with Krishnapura Srinivasan.

… pepper may have a less exalted role in natural insect repellents,
see Katrizky, Alan R., “Synthesis and bioassay of improved mosquito repellents predicted from chemical structure,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
May 27, 2008, Vol. 105, no. 21, 7359–7364, and press release from the American Chemical Society dated Aug. 16, 2009.

… some six hundred million people are estimated to consume betel daily.
See Pragya Misra, et al. “Pro-apoptotic effect of the landrace Bangla Mahoba of
Piper betle
on
Leishmania donovani
may be due to the high content of eugenol,”
Journal of Medical Microbiology
(2009), 58, 1058–1066.

… people in the Chinese city of Xiangtan in Hunan Province like to chew only the husk of fresh areca nut, which they call “binglang,” the basis for an 1.18 billion-dollar industry.
Dan Levin, “Despite Risks, an Addictive Treat Fuels a Chinese City,”
The New York Times,
August, 19, 2010.

 … extracts from Piper betle and Psidium guajava … suppressed the growth of bacteria that contributes to dental plaque.
A. R. Fathilah, et al. “Bacteriostatic Effect of
Piper betle
and
Psidium guajava
Extracts on Dental Plaque Bacteria,”
Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences
12 (6): 518–521, 2009.

Allopurinol … inhibits the enzyme,
Kazyua Murata et al, “Hydroxychavicol: a potent xanthine oxidase inhibitor obtained from the leaves of betel,
Piper betle
,”
Journal of Natural Medicine
(2009), 63: 355–359.

Current therapies for the visceral form of the disease aren't very effective and have a variety of side effects.
See Pragya Misra, et al, p. 1058.

Epilogue

Some 640 million pounds are harvested annually in the world.
See Karvy Comtrade Limited Special Reports,
http://www.karvycom
trade.com
.

 

S
ELECTED
B
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American Sociological Review,
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Aggarwal, Bharat B., and Kunnumakkara, Ajaikumar B. editors.
Molecular Targets and Therapeutic Uses of Spice: Modern Uses for Ancient Medicine.
Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2009.

Alden, Dauril.
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_____
.
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_____
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_____
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