25 2 THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



Safrol, C 10 H 10 O 2 , 80 per cent. 



Pinene, 



Phellandrene, C 10 H 16 , 10 per cent. 



d-camphor, C 10 H 16 O, 6.8 per cent. 



Eugenol, C 10 H 2 O, 0.5 per cent. 



Cardinene, (?) C 15 H 24 , 2 7 per cent. 



and residue. 



Attention might be called to the singular fact that all these compounds 

 contain 10 atoms of carbon in the molecule, with the exception of cardin- 

 ene which has half as many more. It seems also that this circumstance 

 points to an intergenetic relation of these various products of the same 

 plant. Another coincidence which should not pass unnoticed is, that oil 

 of sassafras bark in its qualitative chemical composition closely resembles 

 oil of camphor, which is, however, not so surprising, seeing that the sassa- 

 fras and camphor trees belong to the same plant family. 



This similarity in composition has been for some time familiar to chem- 

 ical manufacturers, who seized the opportunity for producing substitutes 

 for oil of sassafras from the oily by-products of the manufacture of camphor* 

 As a result, artificial (?) commercial, oils of sassafras are nothing else than 

 fractions of Japanese camphor oil, of about the same specific gravity, 1.07, 

 as that of the natural oil. Such substitutes are, for their cheapness, very 

 largely used, especially by soap manufacturers. Pure safrol, which is pro- 

 duced commercially from the same source, also finds a considerable use in 

 chemical industry as well as in medicine. For medicinal purposes safrol is 

 even preferable to oil of sassafras as it always has a uniform composition 

 and its purity may be easily determined by the' usual tests. On the other 

 hand the natural oil always shows some variation in composition. 



Oil of Sassafras Leaves. — In addition to the root bark oil, the composi- 

 tion of which we have already considered, the sassafras tree also produces 

 another essential oil which does not appear in commerce and which in 

 part seems to have been distilled but once for the purpose of chemical ex- 

 amination, namely the oil of sassafras leaves. It is quite well known that 

 sassafras leaves when crushed exhale a rather strong and very agreeable 

 odor. The quantity of oil that can be extracted therefrom by steam dis- 

 tillation, is, howeVer, very small, amounting to only 0.028 per cent, of the 

 weight of the fresh leaves. The oil has, when fresh, a greenish-yellow 

 color, turning to a reddish-brown with age ; it has a much lower specific 

 gravity, 0.873, tnan tlie bark oil > an optical rotation of plus 6 degrees 25 

 minutes and a very agreeable odor somewhat resembling oil of lemon and 

 oil of citronella. The characteristic odor is indeed due to the presence of 

 the same aromatic bodies which exist in the latter oils, for chemical ex- 

 amination has proven that the oil contains a considerable amount of citral, 



