CUBEBS (Arab. kabábah), the fruit of several species of pepper (Piper), belonging to the natural order Piperaceae. The cubebs of pharmacy are produced by Piper Cubeba, a climbing woody shrub indigenous to south Borneo, Sumatra, Prince of Wales Island and Java. It has round, ash-coloured, smooth branches; lanceolate, or ovate-oblong, somewhat leathery, shining leaves, 4 to 6½ in. long and 1½ to 2 in. broad. Male and female flowers are borne on distinct plants. The fruits are small, globose, about ⅕ in. in diameter, and not so large as white pepper; their contracted stalk-like bases are between ⅓ and ½ in. in length; and from forty to fifty of them are borne upon a common stem. The cubeb is cultivated in Java and Sumatra, the fruits are gathered before they are ripe, and carefully dried. Commercial cubebs consist of the dried berries, usually with their stalks attached; the pericarp is greyish-brown, or blackish and wrinkled; and the seed, when present, is hard, white and oily. The odour of cubebs is agreeable and aromatic; the taste, pungent, acrid, slightly bitter and persistent. About 15% of a volatile oil is obtained by distilling cubebs with water; after rectification with water, or on keeping, this deposits rhombic crystals of camphor of cubebs, C15H26O; cubebene, the liquid portion, has the formula C15H24. Cubebin, CH2[O]2C6H3·CH:CH·CH2OH, is a crystalline substance existing in cubebs, discovered by Eugène Soubeiran and Capitaine in 1839; it may be prepared from cubebene, or from the pulp left after the distillation of the oil. The drug, along with gum, fatty oils, and malates of magnesium and calcium, contains also about 1% of cubebic acid, and about 6% of a resin.
The dose of the fruit is 30 to 60 grains, and the British Pharmacopoeia contains a tincture with a dose of ½ to 1 drachm. The volatile oil—oleum cubebae—is also official, and is the form in which this drug is most commonly used, the dose being 5 to 20 minims, which may be suspended in mucilage or given after meals in a cachet. The drug has the typical actions of a volatile oil, but exerts some of them in an exceptional degree. Thus it is liable to cause a cutaneous erythema in the course of its excretion by the skin; it has a marked diuretic action; and it is a fairly efficient disinfectant of the urinary passages. Its administration causes the appearance in the urine of a salt of cubebic acid which is precipitated by heat or nitric acid, and is therefore liable to be mistaken for albumin, when these two most common tests for the occurrence of albuminuria are applied. Cubebs is frequently used in the form of cigarettes for asthma, chronic pharyngitis and hay-fever. A small percentage of cubebs is also commonly included in lozenges designed for use in bronchitis, in which the antiseptic and expectoral properties of the drug are useful. But the most important therapeutic application of this drug is in gonorrhoea, where its antiseptic action is of much value. As compared with copaiba in this connexion cubebs has the advantages of being less disagreeable to take and somewhat less likely to disturb the digestive apparatus in prolonged administration. The introduction of the drug into medicine is supposed to have been due to the Arabian physicians in the middle ages. Cubebs were formerly candied and eaten whole, or used ground as a seasoning for meat. Their modern employment in England as a drug dates from 1815. “Cubebae” were purchased in 1284 and 1285 by Lord Clare at 2s. 3d. and 2s. 9d. per ℔ respectively; and in 1307 1 ℔ for the king’s wardrobe cost 9s., a sum representing about £3, 12s. in present value (Rogers, Hist. of Agriculture and Prices, i. 627–628, ii. 544).
A closely allied species, Piper Clusii, produces the African cubebs or West African black-pepper, the berry of which is smoother than that of common cubebs and usually has a curved pedicel. In the 14th century it was imported into Europe from the Grain Coast, under the name of pepper, by merchants of Rouen and Lippe.
CUBICLE (Lat. cubiculum), a small chamber containing a couch or a bed. The small rooms opening into the atrium of a Pompeian house are known as cubicula. In modern English schools “cubicle” is the term given to the separate small bedrooms into which the dormitories are divided, as opposed to the system of large open dormitories.
CUBITT, THOMAS (1788–1855), English builder, was born at Buxton, near Norwich, on the 25th of February 1788. Few men have exhibited greater self-reliance in early life in the pursuit
of a successful career. In his nineteenth year, when he was
working as a journeyman carpenter, his father died, and he tried
to better his position by going on a voyage to India, as captain’s
joiner. He returned to London, two years after, in the possession
of a small capital, and began business as a carpenter. The growth
of his establishment was steady and rapid. He was one of the
first to combine several trades in a “builder’s” business; and
this very much increased his success. One of the earlier works
which gave him reputation was the London Institution in Finsbury
Circus; but it is from 1824 that the vast building operations
date which identify his name with many splendid ranges of London houses, such as Tavistock, Gordon, Belgrave and Lowndes Squares, and the district of South Belgravia. While these and similar extensive operations were in progress, a financial panic, which proved ruinous to many, was surmounted in his case by a determined spirit and his integrity of character. He took great interest in sanitary measures, and published, for private circulation, a pamphlet on the general drainage of London, the substance of which was afterwards embodied in a letter to The Times; the plan he advocated was subsequently adopted by the conveyance of the sewage matter some distance below London. He advocated the provision of open spaces in the
environs of London as places of public recreation, and was one of the originators of Battersea Park, the first of the people’s parks. At a late period he received professionally the recognition of royalty, the palace at Osborne being erected after his designs,
and under his superintendence; and in the Life of the Prince Consort he is described by Queen Victoria as one “than whom a better and kinder man did not exist.” In 1851, although he was not identified with the management of the Great Exhibition, he showed the warmest sympathy with its objects, and aided its projectors in many ways, especially in the profitable investment of their surplus funds. Cubitt, when he rose to be a capitalist, never forgot the interests and well-being of his workpeople.
He was elected president of the Builders’ Society some time
before his death, which took place at his seat Denbies, near
Dorking, on the 20th of December 1855.
His son, George Cubitt (1828– ), who had a long and useful parliamentary career, as Conservative member for West Surrey (1860–1865) and Mid-Surrey (1885–1892), was in 1892 raised to the peerage as Baron Ashcombe.
CUBITT, SIR WILLIAM (1785–1861), English engineer, was born in 1785 at Dilham in Norfolk, where his father was a miller. After serving an apprenticeship of four years (1800–1804) as a joiner and cabinetmaker at Stalham, he became associated with an agricultural-machine maker, named Cook, who resided at Swanton. In 1807 he patented self-regulating sails for windmills, and in 1812 he entered the works of Messrs Ransome of Ipswich, where he soon became chief engineer, and ultimately a partner. Meanwhile, the subject of the employment of criminals had been much in his thoughts; and the result was his introduction of the treadmill about 1818. In 1826 he removed to London, where he gained a very large practice as a civil engineer. Among his works were the Oxford canal, the Birmingham & Liverpool Junction Canal, the improvement of the river Severn, the Bute docks at Cardiff, the Black Sluice drainage and its outfall sluice at Boston harbour, the Middlesborough docks and coal drops in the Tees, and the South-Eastern railway, of which he was chief engineer. The Hanoverian government consulted him about the harbour and docks at Harburg; the water-works of the city of Berlin were constructed under his immediate superintendence; he was asked to report on the construction of the Paris & Lyons railway; and he was consulting engineer for the line from Boulogne to Amiens. Among his later works were two floating landing stages at Liverpool, and the bridge for carrying the London turnpike across the Medway at Rochester. In 1851, when he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he was knighted for his services in connexion with the buildings erected in Hyde Park for the exhibition of that year.
