EDITORIAL.

INTERNAL USE OF ATROPINE. ABRIDGED FROM THE JANUARY NUMBER OF THE LONDON JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.

In the practice of English and American physicians, atropine (atropia) has been hitherto used chiefly as an external application, to dilate the pupil, but, as far as we know, has never been administered internally. In France, the powdered belladonna root has been strongly recommended as affording a reliable and efficient preparation; in this country, the leaves and the extracts and tincture derived from them are alone officinal. Dr. Lusanna, an Italian physician, has ventured upon the internal use of atropia, and, according to our notions, in very large doses. He commences its ad­min­i­stra­tion in doses of one-thirtieth of a grain every three or four hours, gradually increasing the dose according to the effect produced. In some instances he went so far as to give one-third of a grain five times a day.

It may be given, according to Dr. L, in solution in alcohol, or in acetic or some other mild acid. Pills and powders, from the difficulty of apportioning the dose he deems unadvisable. The alcoholic solution has a taste somewhat like that of quinine, but feebler, and not particularly disagreeable. The patient soon becomes habituated to the remedy, and the dose has to be increased. In cases of neuralgia he recommends the application of one-fourteenth to one sixth of a grain to a blistered surface, in the form of pomade. Dr. L. carries the ad­min­i­stra­tion of atropia so far as to produce what we would call its toxicological effects.

1st. Dilatation and immobility of the pupil. Between fourteen and fifteen minutes after the exhibition of from one-twenty-fourth to one-thirtieth of a grain of atropia, the pupil becomes enormously dilated. If the remedy be persevered in the dilatation passes of, but the iris becomes immoveable, and the pupil no longer contracts on exposure to light. When the remedy is stopped, as the other phenomena produced by its exhibition subside, the pupil again becomes extremely dilated. Previous to this it commences to oscillate, contracting slightly when exposed to strong light, and dilating again in the shade. This indicates that the {126} effects of the remedy are disappearing. The dilatation of the pupil is the last of the phenomena to subside, being sometimes met with eight days, or more after the suspension of the atropia.

2. Disturbance of vision. Objects at first seem hazy and ill-defined, persons are not recognized, and it is impossible to read or write. If the dose be increased, objects seem covered with a dark shade, and vision may be wholly lost. Every fresh dose has a sudden and marked effect in diminishing vision, and on its suspension the disturbance of vision disappears with equal rapidity. In one or two days the sight is perfectly restored.

3. Disturbance of Intellect. At first the patient appears dull and stupid, then there is vertigo and confusion of ideas.

4. Hallucinations of sight and hearing. Objects are seen double or greatly magnified; motes and insects flit before the eyes; well known objects assume strange and monstrous forms, or horrible phantoms are seen. The hearing is more rarely affected. Buzzing, tinkling, hissing and whistling are sometimes heard.

5. Anaesthesia. Touch remains apparently perfect, but pain is relieved or blunted. The patient does not seem to suffer from painful tactile impressions.

6. Dryness of the mouth and throat were invariably felt. At first this seemed a purely nervous phenomenon, but if the medication was continued, from the diminution of the salivary secretion it became real.

7. The appetite is early lost, and there is no thirst; but on the cessation of the remedy it returns sharper than ever. Speech is early embarrassed, and the power of swallowing early diminished, becomes finally lost.

8. Delirium alternating with stupor or succeeded by it, is produced by one-tenth of a grain of atropia at the commencement of the treatment, or by one-fourth of a grain later, or by any sudden increase of the dose. The delirium is commonly gay and ridiculous; in one instance only was it mournful. When these phenomena are at all intense, they subside slowly. For several days after the cessation of the medicine, there is confusion and slowness of thought.

9. Redness of the skin was observed in but a single case.

10. Torpor and paralytic tremblings. As the patient gets under the influence of the atropia, the legs become weak and trembling, gradually lose their strength, and he is confined to bed. They may be still agitated by twitching, and convulsive movements.

11. Paralysis of the sphincters of the rectum and bladder. This is the highest point to which, according to Dr. L., the medicative action of atropia can attain. In one case, only, the fæces and urine were passed involuntarily.

The functions of respiration, circulation, and calorification, were never affected by atropia.

After this long catalogue of serious symptoms, Dr. Lusanna rather naively observes, he has never seen any truly alarming results arise from the use of atropia! Should they occur, he recommends wine as the best antidote.

{127}

CULTIVATION OF OPIUM.

The superiority of some specimens of European opium has been noticed by previous observers, and depends probably on the greater care bestowed on its preparation and on the cultivation of the plant.

CHROMIC ACID AS AN ESCHAROTIC.

PUBLIC HYGEINE.

CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY;

Knapp’s Technology belongs to a class of books char­ac­ter­is­tic of the present day, and of the highest and most extended usefulness. Giving the practical details of the arts in connection with the scientific principles on which they are founded, it extends the views of the manufacturer and the economist, and places him on the right path for further improvement. To the American it presents the further advantage of ample and precise details of what is being done in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe. All engaged in pursuits with which chemistry has any connection (and with what is it not now connected?) will find in the various volumes of the Technology, valuable information in regard to their own peculiar avocations, while the variety of its information and the copiousness of its illustrations, gives it a high interest to the general reader.

At a meeting of the College of Pharmacy of the city of New York, held on Thursday, 25th of March, the following gentlemen were elected officers for the ensuing year.

TRUSTEES.

{129}

NEW YORK JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. MAY, 1852.

NOTES IN PHARMACY, No. 2. BY BENJAMIN CANAVAN.

TINCT. FERRI AETHEREA.—At the in­stance of one of our phy­si­cians, I made some of the above pre­par­a­tion for a lady pa­tient of his, who, after having used the other pre­par­a­tions of Iron “ad nauseam,” had taken it with benefit in Europe under the name of “Bestucheff’s tinc­ture,” as which, it at one time enjoyed great popularity, so that a very large sum was given to the author in purchase of it by the Czarina Catharine. After the com­po­si­tion became known it fell into disuse, almost justifying us in reversing the quotation from Celsus,—

“Morbos autem, non remediis, sed verbis curari.”

It presents the metal in a different chemical state from what it is in the muriated tincture, viz: a very soluble deuto chloride; no acid is present and there are besides the anodyne and anti-spasmodic properties of the ethereal spirit, rendering it peculiarly appropriate in hysterical affections; and being pleasant to the taste and miscible with water, it is not at all repulsive.—Supposing it may prove useful elsewhere and to others, I subjoin the formula I have used, and to which I give the preference, as being the most complete. It is original in the Austrian Pharmacopœia of 1820, whence it has been copied into many French formularies, under the name of “teinture étherée de {130} chlorure de fer,” and may be found with a number of other formulæ for the same preparation in the “Pharmocopée Unverselle” of Jourdan.

Add the iron filings very gradually, and in small quantity at a time to the acids mixed together, in a porcelain mortar of ten or twelve inch diameter, and allow each portion to be dissolved before another is added, and so proceed until saturation is complete. Decant; evaporate to dryness in a sand bath; dissolve the residue in a quantity of water equal in weight to itself, and to each ounce of this solution add six ounces of sulphuric ether, agitate them well together and separate the supernatant ethereal solution, to which add four times its bulk of alcohol; finally, expose it to the action of the sun’s rays until the color is altogether discharged. The dose is twenty to thirty drops.

MUCILAGO (GUMMI) ACACLÆ.—Among the many useful hints which have appeared in the New York Journal of Pharmacy, in relation to several formulæ of the U. S. P., I perceive the preparation mucilage of gum arabic has been deemed worthy of a supervisory notice, and having experienced some annoyance with regard to it, arising simply from the fact that the officinal preparation has been heretofore entirely overlooked by apothecaries generally, each one instituting a formula for himself, I have been very much gratified by the result of adhering strictly to the formula of the Pharmacopœia, and would take the liberty to say that as the formulæ of all the Pharmacopœias of countries wherein our language is spoken are alike, it surely would not be productive of any advantage to introduce an exception to this conformity, to suit a local peculiarity, arising, to say the least, from inadvertence. Besides the thickness of the officinal mucilage is not much greater than that of syrup of gum, and is even absolutely necessary for the chief proposes for which it is intended or prescribed, viz: the suspension of weighty metallic {131} oxydes, &c., and the holding balsams, oils, &c., in mixtures,—much benefit then would, so far as my experience goes, accrue from the apothecary confining himself strictly to the officinal mucilage, and as individual formulæ are based upon it, the re-compounding them from transcribed versions would be rendered more accurate. This “whittling” away of standards, to make them correspond to the shortcomings of negligence or parsimony, has only the effect of rendering “confusion worse confounded.”

MISTURA AMYGDALARUM.—Being a work of some hour or so’s duration to prepare the almond emulsion ab initio, it has been usual to keep the ingredients in the form of paste, from a proportionate quantity of which the mixture is made when required. The paste does not keep, becoming musty and sometimes exceedingly hard. I have therefore adopted the plan of keeping the almonds already bleached and well dried, in which state they do not undergo any change and thus is made all the preparation that can be, to expedite the process.

LIQ. ARSENIT. POTASS.—On taking up, the other day, a shop bottle in which Fowler’s solution had been kept for some half a score or dozen of years, I perceived it to exhale a strong garlicky odor char­ac­ter­is­tic of free metallic arsenic. On examining the bottle which is of the ordinary flint glass, the inner surface presented the appearance of being coated or rather corroded, and having a metallic lustre so far up as the bottle was generally occupied by the solution, and in the upper part several specks were visible, of the same character, as if they had been produced by the sublimation of the corrosive agent. The coating was not affected by any amount of friction nor by alkalies but was slowly dissolved by acetic acid, from which iodide of potassium threw down a precipitate of iodide of lead.—Deeming, therefore, the decomposition to have arisen from the lead contained in the flint glass I have since then kept the solution in green glass bottles.

{132}

LIQUOR MAGNESIÆ CITRATIS. THOS. S. WIEGAND, PHILADELPHIA.

The attention which has been given to this article by phar­ma­ceu­tists, both on account of its pleasantness and its great tendency to change, has induced me to offer the following observations.

The advantage of the plan proposed is that a perfectly satisfactory article can be furnished in five or eight minutes, thus rendering unnecessary any attempt to make the preparation permanent at the expense of its remedial value. That this is the manner in which the public are supplied, save at stores where large quantities are sold, there can be but little doubt, from the experiments of Professor Proctor of Philadelphia, detailed in the 23rd volume of the American Journal of Pharmacy, p.p. 214 and 216, which show conclusively that a permanent solution of citrate of magnesia must be a decidedly acid one.

Another method for making a soluble citrate has been devised by Dorvault, which is published in his treatise, entitled “L’officine;” but from certain difficulties in manipulation his process cannot come into very general use.

The formula offered is—

Take, of carbonate of magnesia, in powder, five drachms, boiling water five fluid ounces, throw the magnesia upon the water in a shallow vessel, when thoroughly mixed, pour five sixths of the pulp into a strong quart bottle, fitted with cork and string for tying down; then make a solution of seven and a half drachms of citric acid in two fluid ounces of water, pour it into the magnesia mixture, cork and tie down immediately; when the solution has been effected (which will require but a minute and a half, or two minutes,) empty it into a bottle capable of holding twelve fluid ounces, containing two fluid ounces of syrup of citric acid, add the remaining pulp of carbonate of magnesia, nearly fill the bottle with water, and cork instantly, {133} securing it with twine or wire; if the carbonate be of good quality it will be entirely dissolved in seven minutes.

Of course it is not intended that the carbonate of magnesia can be rubbed to powder, the water boiled, the bottles washed and fitted with strings and corks in the time above mentioned. My plan is to have the bottles prepared with their corks, strings, and syrup in advance, and to keep the carbonate of magnesia in a state of powder for this purpose.

[Continued from the March number.] PRACTICAL HINTS. BY A WHOLESALE DRUGGIST.

BALSAM PERU. For many years past a factitious balsam Peru has been manufactured in a neighboring city in very considerable quantities, and has entered largely into consumption; it is made by dissolving balsam tolu in alcohol. It closely resembles the true balsam, and is calculated to deceive unless subjected to a close examination. If one’s attention is particularly called to it, a smell of alcohol is perceptible. It is, however, easily tested by burning in a spoon or small cup. The factitious balsam readily ignites on the application of flame and burns, as may be supposed, with a blue flame. The true balsam ignites with much more difficulty and emits a dense black smoke, and on the application of considerable heat, the air becomes filled with small feathery flakes of lamp black. This test, together with the sensible properties of appearance, taste and smell, will enable one to determine without doubt as to its genuineness.

LAC SULPHURIS. SULPHUR PRECIPITATUM. MILK OF SULPHUR. This preparation of sulphur is made by boiling sulphur and lime in water, and after filtering, precipitating the sulphur with muriatic acid. It differs from the ordinary sulphur in being in a state of more minute division and being softer and less brittle after having been melted. {134}

When sulphuric acid is used to precipitate the sulphur, sulphate of lime is formed and cannot be separated from the precipitated sulphur by the ordinary process of washing, that salt being insoluble in water; for this reason muriatic acid should be used, as the salt thus formed, the muriate of lime or chloride of calcium is perfectly soluble and can be readily separated from the sulphur by washing.

The ordinary lac sulphuris of commerce, is prepared by the use of sulphuric acid, and in consequence is found to contain a very large proportion of sulphate of lime, or plaster of Paris.—Several specimens examined were found to consist of nearly equal parts of sulphate of lime and sulphur.

The test for the above impurity is by burning in a small cup or spoon. The sulphur burns out entirely, leaving the impurity unaltered. The exact amount of impurity may be determined by weighing the substance before and after burning, and deducting the one weight from the other.

PRECIPITATED CHALK OR CARB. LIME. It is very important that physicians should be able to obtain this preparation of a reliable quality. A preparation purporting to be the above, but in fact nothing more nor less than sulph. lime or plaster of Paris, has, in very considerable quantities entered into consumption within a year or two past. It is difficult to determine between the two from their appearance. The test, however, is very simple and consists in treating the suspected article with muriatic acid. It should dissolve perfectly with brisk effervescence, if it be in reality pure carbonate of lime. If it consists, wholly or in part, of sulphate of lime, the whole or such part remains unaffected by the acid.

Pure muriatic acid should be used, as the commercial acid frequently contains sulphuric acid, in which case a portion of sulphate of lime is formed and remains undissolved.

Magnesia is sometimes found in this preparation, but by accident generally and not by design, as the price of the magnesia offers no inducement for the adulteration.

{135}

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.[9]

The confusion of Babel is felt most severely in the matter of weights and measures. Whether we consider the number of names of weights and measures, the similarity of names, the discrepancy in amount between those of the same name, or the irregular relations of those of the same denomination, we find a maze, the intricacies of which we cannot retain in our memory an hour after we have committed them to it. Sometimes, too, we find a farther discrepancy of a surprising nature; as if the authorised pint should not be the exact eighth of the authorised gallon, and so there should be two different quarts, one of two exact pints, and one of a fourth of a gallon, as well as a false gallon of eight exact pints, and a false pint of an eighth of an exact gallon.

[9] Universal Dictionary of Weights and Measures. By J. H. ALEXANDER. Baltimore. W. Menefie & Co. 158 pp. 8vo.

We cannot here trace the genealogy of this multitude; Chaos and old night are the ancestors of them all, except those now prevailing in France. A large number of them are of vegetable origin, from grains of wheat, carob beans, carat seeds, &c. The Accino, the Akey, and innumerable others seem to have had a similar origin. Most measures of length have been derived from the human form, as foot, span, fathom, nail, &c. To originate a new measure or weight has proved much easier than to preserve their uniformity when established. Here legislation has been resorted to. The arm of Henry I. was measured, and a yard of the same length was deposited in the exchequer as a standard. “Thirty-two (afterwards twenty-four) grains of well dried wheat from the middle of a good ear” were to weigh a penny, twenty pence one ounce, and twelve ounces a pound. Science finally carried the matter one step further, and a yard is now 36⁄39.13929 part of the length of “a pendulum that {136} in a vacuum and at the level of mid-tide, under the latitude of London, shall vibrate seconds of mean time.” The metre, a measure established by science, is 1⁄10,000,000 part of the distance from the equator to the north pole. Measures of capacity have been still more difficult to verify, and weights, when depending upon these last, have been involved in further difficulties.—William the Conquerer, enacted that 8 pounds good wheat, 61,440 grains, make a gallon. In England now, 10 pounds of water, 70,000 grains, at 60° Fahr., make a gallon. In France a cubic decimetre of water, at maximum density, 39.2° Fahr., weighs a kilogramme.

But the impotency of law is nowhere shown more strikingly than in its attempts to destroy spurious and useless weights and measures. Thirty of these are said to be prevalent in Scotland at this day; and although Magna Charta required that there should be but one weight in all England, the assize of bread is still regulated by a pound, 16 of which = 17

6 oz. avoirdupois. Still further, it may not always occur to us that English measures, dry and liquid, need translating when their works are reprinted in the United States, as much as the French measures; for the imperial gallon, used for both dry and liquid measures, differs from both our gallons. It contains 1.2006 of our liquid gallons; our dry gallon contains 1.1631 of our liquid gallons.

But it is in the weights of the United States that we are more particularly interested. We will, therefore, take our leave of the rest of 5,400 and more weights and measures which Mr. Alexander has ranged in alphabetical order, from

Name.Locality.Character.Value.
“Aam; for wine,Amsterdam,Liquid capacity,41.00041 gall.” to
“Zuoja piccola,Udino,Superficial,0.8553 acres.”

Let us enquire what are the weights of the United States.—We find but one unambiguous term to measure the rest by, the grain. We have then:

grains
 1. The long ton,15,680,000      
 2. The ton,14,000,000      
 3. The quintal,784,000      
 4. The hundred weight,700,000      
 5. Quarter,196,000      
 6. Pound avoirdupois,7,000      
 7. Pound Troy,5,760      
 8. Pound Apothecaries’,5,760      
 9. Ounce Troy,480      
10. Ounce Apothecaries’,480      
11. Ounce Avoirdupois,437.5    
12. Drachm Apothecaries’,60      
13. Drachm Avoirdupois,54.6875 
14. Dram of the arithmetic,27.34375
15. Pennyweight,24      
16. Scruple,20      
17. Grain,1      

A formidable array truly! From this we see that while an ounce of cork is lighter than an ounce of gold, a pound of cork is heavier than a pound of gold! Nay, further, let the apothecary go to the druggist for a drachm of opium, and he will receive and pay for a drachm avoirdupois, a weight unknown even to Mr. Alexander, although in constant use in this city. But the moment he puts it into his mortar there is not a drachm of it! If he wishes to use a drachm in pills or tincture, he must add more than five grains to it. Could anything be more inconvenient or more prolific in mistakes? To prevent butter from becoming rancid, we are told to mix with it the bark of slippery elm, in the “proportion of a drachm (or dram) to the pound.” Who can tell what it means? Six different proportions might accord with this Delphic response; the most probable is 60:7000. But the grievance to which the apothecary is subject does not all consist in his buying by lighter ounces, and selling by heavier. The subdivisions by which he compounds have no reference to his convenience. Long habit alone can save him from either laborious calculation or risk of error. But still another chance of error comes into the account. Two characters,

and

, are joined to numerals, to indicate {138} quantities; a mistake of these, by either prescriber or apothecary, may prove fatal. A case in point occurred a few years since, well known to many of our readers. A physician, prescribed cyanide of potassium, by a formula in which

had been printed, by mistake, for

. The apothecary, instead of sending him the prescription for correction, as he ought to have done, put it up and sent it with the fearful monition that the dose would prove fatal—and so it did—to the prescriber himself, who took the dose his patient dared not touch. He died in five minutes, a victim to a printer’s error, to his own self confidence, to want of etiquette in the apothecary, and last, not least, to an ill-contrived system of weights.

This brings us to the practical question, What is to be done? All agree that there ought to be a reform. On this point we can do no better than quote the close of Mr. Alexander’s preface.—“Finally,” says he (page vii.) “if I may be allowed, in connection with this work and its appropriate applications, to allude to certain dreams of my own, (as they may be; although I consider them capable, without undue effort, of a more prompt and thorough realisation than seems to be ordinarily anticipated,) as to the prevalence, some day, of an universal conformity of weights and measures, I must acknowledge that such a result was one of the ends I had in view in the original collection of materials. Not that such a work was going to show more emphatically than business men feel, and reflecting men know, the importance of such an universal conformity; or that a book whose pages deal in discords, could, of itself, produce unison; but the first step to any harmonious settlement is, to see clearly, and at a glance, where the differences lie, and what they are.—If a millennial period for this world is ever to come, as many wise have deemed, and pious prayed, it must be preceded by one common language, and one common system of weights and measures, as the basis of intercourse. And the way to that is to be built, not by the violent absorption of other and diverse systems into one, but rather by a compromise into which all may blend. When the Earth, in her historical orbit, shall {139} have reached that point, (as it stood ere mankind were scattered from the plain of Shinar) and not till then, may we begin to hope that her revolutions will be stilled, and that before long the weights and measures of fleeting Time will be merged and lost in the infinite scales and illimitable quantities of Eternity.” We are not sure that we precisely understand the last sentence, and we are sure we dissent entirely from the one that precedes it. No compromise can be of service in bringing about a uniformity in weights and measures. We must either make a better system than the best extant, and ask all men to adopt it, or if the best that human ingenuity and science can devise is already in use, so much the better; let us adopt it with all our heart. Is the French system this best one? We believe it is, nor have we ever heard it called in question.—Why then speak of a new one as desirable? We fear the suggestion is the offspring of a national vanity, which ought to be beneath us. We would not oppose such a motive even to the introduction of the centigrade thermometer, which is much more inconvenient than Fahrenheit’s, and has no one advantage over it in any respect; still less should it bar the progress of a system against which no fault can be alleged, but that it is foreign.

We agree with our author that the introduction of a new system is much easier than is generally supposed. It will not be like the change of a monetary system, where the old coins remain, mingled with the new, to perpetuate the old names.—The change could be, by law, effected next New Year’s day, and all inconvenience from it would be over in a month, save some awkwardness from habit, and two more serious difficulties. One is from the human propensity to bisection. Thus the old hundredweight of 112 pounds is bisected down to 7 pounds, and the grocer will sell half this quantity, 31⁄2 pounds, at a cheaper rate than he will sell 3 pounds or 4. Unfortunately in bisecting 100 we run down too soon to the fractions 121⁄2 and 61⁄4. The French have been obliged to give way to this propensity, and divide the kilogramme in a binary manner, {140} with an unavoidable irregularity, reckoning 311⁄4 grains as 32. Would that 32 × 32 = 1000! Our only remedy is to change the radix of numeration from 10 to 16, a thing impossible but to a universal dictator. The other difficulty is in our measure for land. This must remain in all surveyed tracts in such a shape that 40 acres, and also 5 acres, shall be some multiple of unity.

But shall the apothecary wait the action of government?—This is neither necessary nor desirable. Some relief he ought to have speedily. If he dare not make so great an advance as to adopt the French system, (his truest and most honorable policy,) let all subdivisions of the avoirdupois pound be discarded, except the grain. Introduce the chemists’ weights of 1000, 500, 300, 100, 50, &c. grains, and let all prescriptions be written in grains alone. This, perhaps, is the only feasible course.

We must return once more to our author before taking leave of our readers. The motive for making the collection was one that strikes us as new. It was for ethnological and historical purposes. As the carat points to India as the origin of the diamond trade, so we find in the names, mode of subdivision, and amount of weights and measures evidences of the migrations of races, and of the ancient and obsolete channels in which trade once flowed. The care with which Mr. Alexander seems to have corrected these tables, and adjusted the discordant elements of which they are composed, and corrected the discrepancies between them, makes them more worthy of reliance than anything that has preceded them, and leaves little to be desired that is within the reach of human attainment. After the alphabetical arrangement, are given the weight and measure systems of the “principal countries of the world,” beginning with Abyssinia and ending with Würtemberg. And we have only to add that the mechanical execution of the volume is worthy of the care and labor the author has spent upon it, unsurpassed, in fact, by any book made for use we have ever seen.

{141}

QUINIDINE. BY MR. ROBERT HOWARD.

This alkaloid, which gained a prize in the Great Exhibition, has scarcely yet attracted much attention. Some of the cheaper barks now largely imported from New Grenada contains so much of it that it is, perhaps, as well that it should be more studied. The Cinchona cordifolia, from this part of the continent, is particularly rich in it. It is, however, contained in larger or smaller quantities in the Bolivian and Peruvian barks—the Cinchona Calisaya, Boliviana, rufinervis, and especially ovata.

Referring your readers to a very able paper in your Journal,[10] I beg to add a few facts from my own observations.

[10] Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Journal, vol. ix., p. 322, January, 1850.

The sulphate of quinidine, or β quinine as it is called by some, (Van Heijninger and others,) is so like the sulphate of quinine, that the eye or the taste can with difficulty distinguish them. It forms the same light fibrous cry­stal­li­za­tion, and occupies as large a bulk. It corresponds in appearance with the description given by Winckler, of “chinidine.” (See Pharm. Journ. for April, 1845, vol. iv., p. 468.) He notices that it has “a remarkably white color and a peculiarly faint lustre.” Its most striking char­ac­ter­is­tic is its extreme solubility. Pure sulphate of quinine requires nearly thirty times its weight of boiling water for solution, whilst the sulphate of quinidine dissolves in four parts. On the other hand the pure alkaloid crystallizes readily out of proof spirit and out of ether, whilst quinine does not crystallize out of either. A very good test for the presence of cinchonine in sulphate of quinine is also capable of being applied to detect the presence of β quinine. On this point I would refer for very interesting details to a paper by M. Guibourt, in the Journal de Pharmacie for January in this year.

In your Journal of April, 1843, I gave a test for sulphate of quinine, to which I would again advert, because subsequent {142} experience has proved it to be a tolerable easy, and at the same time exact means of ascertaining its purity. Put 100 grains in a Florence flask with five ounces of distilled water, heat this to brisk ebullition; the sulphate of quinine ought not to be entirely dissolved; add two ounces more water, and again heat it to ebullition; ought to make a perfectly clear solution. If this be allowed to cool for six hours, and the crystals carefully dried in the open air on blotting paper, they will be found to weigh about ninety grains, the mother-liquor may be evaporated and tested with ether, when any cinchonine or β quinine will be easily detected. On examining sulphate of quinine of commerce from several leading manufacturers, I have found all of them give, within a grain or two, the same result, and, in each, indications of a β quinine, though to an unimportant extent.

The above quantity of water (seven ounces) readily dissolves 800 grains of sulphate of β quinine; and if 100 grains of this salt are dissolved in seven ounces of water, the crystals as above weigh only fifty-four grains, thus leaving forty-six grains in solution instead of about ten grains.

The medical effects of β quinine deserve investigation, the chemical constitution and the taste appear to indicate a great similarity if not identity.