Chapter 20

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History.—The Khmer kingdom (seeCambodia), at its zenith from the 9th to the 12th centuries, included a large portion of the modern colony of Cochin-China, the coastal portion and perhaps the eastern region being under the dominion of the empire of Champa, which broke up during the 15th century. This eastern region was occupied in the 17th century by the Annamese, who in the 18th century absorbed the western provinces. From this period the history of Cochin-China follows that of Annam (q.v.) till 1867, when it was entirely occupied by the French and became a French colony. In 1887 it was united with Cambodia, Annam and Tongking to form the Indo-Chinese Union (seeIndo-China, French).

1See alsoIndo-China, French; andAnnam.

COCHINEAL, a natural dye-stuff used for the production of scarlet, crimson, orange and other tints, and for the preparation of lake and carmine. It consists of the females ofCoccus cacti, an insect of the familyCoccidaeof the orderHemiptera, which feeds upon various species of theCactaceae, more especially the nopal plant,Opuntia coccinellifera, a native of Mexico and Peru. The dye was introduced into Europe from Mexico, where it had been in use long before the entrance of the Spaniards in the year 1518, and where it formed one of the staple tributes to the crown for certain districts. In 1523 Cortes received instructions from the Spanish court to procure it in as large quantities as possible. It appears not to have been known in Italy so late as the year 1548, though the art of dyeing then flourished there. Cornelius van Drebbel, at Alkmaar, first employed cochineal for the production of scarlet in 1650. Until about 1725 the belief was very prevalent that cochineal was the seed of a plant, but Dr Martin Lister in 1672 conjectured it to be a kind of kermes, and in 1703 Antony van Leeuwenhoek ascertained its true nature by aid of the microscope. Since its introduction cochineal has supplanted kermes (Coccus ilicis) over the greater part of Europe.

The male of the cochineal insect is half the size of the female, and, unlike it, is devoid of nutritive apparatus; it has long white wings, and a body of a deep red colour, terminated by two diverging setae. The female is apterous, and has a dark-brown plano-convex body; it is found in the proportion of 150 to 200 to one of the male insect. The dead body of the mother insect serves as a protection for the eggs until they are hatched. Cochineal is now furnished not only by Mexico and Peru, but also by Algiers and southern Spain. It is collected thrice in the seven months of the season. The insects are carefully brushed from the branches of the cactus into bags, and are then killed by immersion in hot water, or by exposure to the sun, steam, or the heat of an oven—much of the variety of appearance in the commercial article being caused by the mode of treatment. The dried insect has the form of irregular, fluted and concave grains, of which about 70,000 go to a pound. Cochineal has a musty and bitterish taste. There are two principal varieties—silver cochineal, which has a greyish-red colour, and the furrows of the body covered with a white bloom or fine down; andblack cochineal, which is of a dark reddish brown, and destitute of bloom.Granillais an inferior kind, gathered from uncultivated plants. The best crop is the first of the season, which consists of the unimpregnated females; the later crops contain an admixture of young insects and skins, which contain proportionally little colouring matter.

The black variety of cochineal is sometimes sold for silver cochineal by shaking it with powdered talc or heavy-spar; but these adulterations can be readily detected by means of a lens. The duty in the United Kingdom on imported cochineal was repealed in 1845.

Cochineal owes its tinctorial power to the presence of a substance termed cochinealin or carminic acid, C17H18O10, which may be prepared from the aqueous decoction of cochineal. Cochineal also contains a fat and wax; cochineal wax or coccerin, C30H60(C31H61O3)2, may be extracted by benzene, the fat is a glyceryl myristate C3H5(C14H27O2)3.

COCHLAEUS, JOHANN(1479-1552), German humanist and controversialist, whose family name was Dobneck, was born of poor parents in 1479 at Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), whence his friends gave him the punning surname Cochlaeus (spiral), for which he occasionally substituted Wendelstinus. Having received some education at Nuremberg from the humanist Heinrich Grieninger, he entered (1504) the university of Cologne. In 1507 he graduated, and published under the name of Wendelstein his first piece,In musicam exhortatorium. He left Cologne (May 1510) to become schoolmaster at Nuremberg, where he brought out several school manuals. In 1515 he was at Bologna, hearing (with disgust) Eck’s famous disputation against usury, and associating with Ulrich von Hutten and humanists. He took his doctor’s degree at Ferrara (1517), and spent some time in Rome, where he was ordained priest. In 1520 he became dean of the Liebfrauenkirche at Frankfort, where he first entered the lists as a controversialist against the party of Luther, developing that bitter hatred to the Reformation which animated his forceful but shallow ascription of the movement to the meanest motives, due to a quarrel between the Dominicans and Augustinians. Luther would not meet him in discussion at Mainz in 1521. He was present at the diets of Worms, Regensburg, Spires andAugsburg. The peasants’ war drove him from Frankfort; he obtained (1526) a canonry at Mainz; in 1529 he became secretary to Duke George of Saxony, at Dresden and Meissen. The death of his patron (1539) compelled him to take flight. He became canon (September 1539) at Breslau, where he died on the 10th of January 1552. He was a prolific writer, largely of overgrown pamphlets, harsh and furious. His more serious efforts retain no permanent value. With humanist convictions, he had little of the humanist spirit. We owe to him one of the few contemporary notices of the young Servetus.

See C. Otto,Johannes Cochlaeus, der Humanist(1874); Haas, in I. Goschler’sDict. encydopéd. de la théol. cath.(1858); Brecher, inAllgemeine deutsche Biographie(1876); T. Kolde, in A. Hauck’sRealencyklopädie für prot. Theol. u. Kirche(1898).

(A. Go.*)

COCK, EDWARD(1805-1802), British surgeon, was born in 1805. He was a nephew of Sir Astley Cooper, and through him became at an early age a member of the staff of the Borough hospital in London, where he worked in the dissecting room for thirteen years. Afterwards he became in 1838 assistant surgeon at Guy’s, where from 1849 to 1871 he was surgeon, and from 1871 to 1892 consulting surgeon. He rose to be president of the College of Surgeons in 1869. He was an excellent anatomist, a bold operator, and a clear and incisive writer, and though in lecturing he was afflicted with a stutter, he frequently utilized it with humorous effect and emphasis. From 1843 to 1849 he was editor ofGuy’s Hospital Reports, which contain many of his papers, particularly on stricture of the urethra, puncture of the bladder, injuries to the head, and hernia. He was the first English surgeon to perform pharyngotomy with success, and also one of the first to succeed in trephining for middle meningeal haemorrhage; but the operation by which his name is known is that of opening the urethra through the perinaeum (seeGuy’s Hospital Reports, 1866). He died at Kingston in 1892.

COCKADE(Fr.cocarde, in 16th centurycoquarde, fromcoq, in allusion probably to the cock’s comb), a knot of ribbons or a rosette worn as a badge, particularly now as part of the livery of servants. The cockade was at first the button and loop or clasp which “cocked” up the side of an ordinary slouch hat. The word first appears in this sense in Rabelais in the phrase “bonnet à la coquarde,” which is explained by Cotgrave (1611) as a “Spanish cap or fashion of bonnet used by substantial men of yore ... worne proudly or peartly on th’ one side.” The bunch of ribbons as a party badge developed from this entirely utilitarian button and loop. The Stuarts’ badge was a white rose, and the resulting white cockade figured in Jacobite songs after the downfall of the dynasty. William III.’s cockade was of yellow, and the House of Hanover introduced theirs of black, which in its present spiked or circular form of leather is worn in England to-day by the royal coachmen and grooms, and the servants of all officials or members of the services. At the battle of Sheriffmuir in the reign of George I. the English soldiers wore a black rosette in their hats, and in a contemporary song are called “the red-coat lads wi’ black cockades.” At the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, cockades of green ribbon were adopted. These afterwards gave place to the tricolour cockade, which is said to have been a mixture of the traditional colours of Paris (red and blue) with the white of the Bourbons, the early Revolutionists being still Royalists. The French army wore the tricolour cockade until the Restoration. To-day each foreign nation has its special coloured cockade. Thus the Austrian is black and yellow, the Bavarian light blue and white, the Belgian black, yellow and red, French the tricolour, Prussian black and white, Russian green and white, and so on, following usually the national colours. Originally the wearing of a cockade, as soon as it had developed into a badge, was restricted to soldiers, as “to mount a cockade” was “to become a soldier.” There is still a trace of the cockade as a badge in certain military headgears in England and elsewhere. Otherwise it has become entirely the mark of domestic service. The military cocked hat, the lineal descendant of thebonnet à la coquarde, became the fashion in France during the reign of Louis XV.

SeeGenealogical Magazine, vols. i.-iii. (London, 1897-1899); Racinet,La Costume historique(6 vols., Paris, 1888).

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