This deposit, during the process of drying, loses its hydrogen, changes color, becoming reddish brown, and is slightly translucid, when very dry it is friable.
The quantity obtained in this first filtering, weighed 5 grains of the Netherland weights, or 0,3250 milligrammes; from an ounce or 32 grammes of roots, employed towards the end of October, I again saved the deposit which was formed: it weighed 1 grain, Netherland, or 0,065 milligrammes.
At present, at the end of November, a third deposition is taking place, and will be collected to be added to the others.
During the whole time the tincture had no effect either upon blue or red litmus paper.
Physical properties. The precipitate is solid, friable, of a reddish color, slightly translucent, without taste.
Chemical properties. Ether, alcohol, water, cold or boiling, have no action upon it; dilute hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric acids, have no action when cold. Concentrated nitric acid, when cold, produces no effect upon it, but if heated to ebullition it attacks it actively, becoming of a brownish red color. Put in a glass tube closed by one only of its extremities, the other being furnished with two pieces of litmus paper, the one becomes blue, the other red. If the tube is placed in the flame of a spirit lamp, in a few instants the matter swells and the reddened paper becomes again blue.
Placed on a slip of platina, and exposed to the flame of a spirit lamp, it swells, giving out a strong odor of burnt animal matter; it burns without flame and leaves a white ash. This ash treated by reagents, has the characteristics of lime.
As may be seen by this short exposition, the deposit is by no means a product resulting from the evaporation of a part of the alcohol, which holds in solution the principles that are deposited, but a particular organic matter united to lime, which is formed at the expense of the azotized principle contained in the roots of the ipecac. What is the azotised principle which concurs in the formation of this substance? Certainly it is not one {205} of those which are commonly met with in vegetables, otherwise the phenomenon which is observed in the tincture of ipecac would be observed in the tinctures made with the other roots. Is it the emetine which is decomposed? If that be the case, the tincture of ipecac would be considered rightly an uncertain preparation.
From the character assigned by M. Willigh to his ipecacuan acid, as well as to the tribasic salt of lead, (Journal de Chimie et de Pharmacie, Octobre, 1851,) it will be readily understood, how I at first thought, without, however, having made any serious researches, that it might be this acid united with the lime, to which the precipitate was owing. But the analysis made by that chemist, which denotes the absence of nitrogen in its composition, does not permit us to entertain this idea.
As will readily be perceived, my researches are far from complete, as I had not a sufficient quantity of the precipitate at my disposition. But while waiting to complete them, I did not wish to delay acquainting the learned world with a fact which appears to me extraordinary and until now unique, and at the same time to call to it the attention of those better situated than myself to pursue such researches.—Presse Medicale Belge.