Mr Gerrard recommends the following process for the preparation of pilocarpine:—“Prepare a soft extract either with leaf or bark, with 50 per cent. alcohol. Digest this with water, filter and wash. Evaporate the filtrate to a short extract, cautiously add ammonia in slight excess, shake well with chloroform, separate the chloroform solution, and allow it to evaporate; the residue is the alkaloidal pilocarpine with probably a small amount of impurity.” Mr Gerrard has also succeeded in preparing a crystalline nitrate and hydrochlorate of the alkaloid, both of which possess the medicinal powers of the jaborandi.
Pilocarpus pinnatifolius. a, flower; b, flower with the petals removed; c, carpels.
The abridged description of a sample of jaborandi from Pernambuco is from Mr Holmes’ paper in the ‘Pharmaceutical Journal.’[8] The cut is from the last edition of Royle’s ‘Materia Medica.’ “The specimens of the plant examined
appear to belong to a shrub about 5 feet high. The root is cylindrical, hardly tapering at all, nearly 3⁄4 inch in diameter for the first 12 inches, and very sparingly branched. Bark of root of a pale yellowish brown, about a line in thickness, and has a short fracture. The root has an odour like a mixture of bruised pea-pods and orange-peel. Its taste is first like that of
green peas; this soon disappears, and gives rise to a tingling sensation. The stem is 1⁄2 inch in diameter near the root, narrowing to 1⁄4 inch in the upper branches. The bark is thin, greyish-brown, longitudinally striated, and in some specimens sprinkled over with a number of white dots. The wood of the stem is yellowish-white and remarkably fibrous. The leaves (one of which is represented in the drawing) are imparipinnate, about 9 inches long, with from 3 to 5 pairs of opposite leaflets, which are articulated to the rachis, and have very short, slightly swollen petiolates. The rachis of the leaf is swollen at the base.
[8] 3rd series, v, 581.
The pairs of leaflets are usually about 11⁄4 inch apart, the lowest pair being about 4 inches from the base of the rachis. The leaflets are very variable in size, even on the same leaf. Their general outline is oblong-lanceolate. They are entire, with an emarginate or even retuse apex and an unequal base, and texture coriaceous. The veins are prominent on both sides of the leaf, and branch from the midrib at an obtuse angle in a pinnate manner. When held up to the light the leaflets are seen to be densely pellucidly punctate. These pellucid dots, which are receptacles of secretion, are not arranged, as in another kind of jaborandi, in lines along the veinlets, but are irregularly scattered all over the leaf, and appear equally numerous in every part. The whole plant is glabrous.”
Mr Holmes says there appear to be two varieties, if not species, of this Pilocarpus, the one being perfectly smooth in every part, as above described, and the other having the stems, petioles, and under surface of the leaves covered with a dense velvety pubescence composed of simple hairs.
JAG′GERY. Syn. Palm sugar. A coarse brown sugar made in India by the evaporation of the juice of several species of palms. The following are the principal varieties of this product:—