reactions of Vulpian, reduces silver nitrate and possesses the other 

 specific qualities of suprarenal extracts. 



With the help of alkalies a carmine-red pigment may also be sepa- 

 rated from these decomposition products. We take this pigment to be 

 that one of the chromogenic substances of Vtilpian which gives the 

 rose-carmine color when suprarenal extracts are treated with oxidizing 

 agents or alkalies. 



A volatile, basic substance of a coniine-like odor is always found to 

 accompany the crude benzoate. When these substances are removed 

 the active principle is left as a highly active sulphate or hydrochlorate, 

 as the case may be. It is therefore a basic substance. Its salts give a color 

 reaction with ferric chloride; they also reduce silver nitrate, but not 

 Fehling's solution. 



It is not possible to split off pyrocatechin from this isolated active 

 principle. The fact that dry distillation causes the appearance of 

 amines and pyrrol in abtnidance, taken in connection with its ability 

 to take up acid radicles, its reducing power, its precipitability by 

 cupric acetate and iodine chloride, and its physiological action, lead 

 us to conclude that our active principle is to be classed with the pyri- 

 dine bases or alkaloids. 



Addendum, June 15, 1897 



Since the foregoing paper was read before the Association of Ameri- 

 can Physicians on May 6, 1897, B. Moore has published a paper in the 

 Journal of Physiology, vol. xxi, Nos. 4 and 5, May 12, 1897, entitled, 

 "On the Chromogen and on the active Physiological Substance of the 

 Suprarenal Gland." In this paper it is suggested that the active prin- 

 ciple may be a pyridine derivative. Moore's conjecture is based, first, 

 on a formula calculated by him from a combustion analysis of Kruken- 

 berg, made Avith an impine, hygroscopic, noncrystalline residue ob- 

 tained by merely decomposing and drying a precipitate seemed oiu 

 of an alcoholic extract of the gland with the help of basic lead acetate. 

 The calculated formula, the carbon content of which differs by 1.33 

 per cent from that actually found by Krukenberg, is C^H^^NO^, and 

 Moore points out that in it the ratio in which the elements carbon and 

 nitrogen stand to each other is the same as in pyridine, C5H-N. Now 

 such a calculation, though suggestive to the investigator, furnishes no 

 proof of the presence of pyridine, for Krukenberg could not possibly 

 have had in hand a chemical individual uncontaminated with other 

 constituents of the gland. Krukenberg himself admits that his ma- 

 terial was a mixture of unaltered pigment and its decomposition prod- 



55 



