98 TWEXTV-FIVE YEARS OF CHEMICAL INVESTIGATION. 



the Spanish colonists in Peru were ravaged iby intermittent fever, 

 they found an effective drug in the Peruvian bark from which 

 the alkaloid quinine has been prepared in such quantities these 

 last ninety years. Southern Africa, too. has its malarial regions, 

 but in the Transkeian forests flourishes a tree which attains a 

 height of fifty feet, and its bark also is declared to possess 

 therapeutic properties similar to those of the Peruvian cinchona. 

 It is. in fact, locally known as the quinine tree, and by natives 

 as Hinjcia {Taberccnwniana z-entricosa Hochst). From the bark 

 of this large tree — its trunk is about four feet in diameter — 

 needle-shaped crystals were extracted in the Grahanistown labora- 

 tory. The alkaloid, as it appears to be, is not quinine, however 

 much it may resemWe the latter in its anti-febrile properties, nor 

 is it identifiable with any other of the cinchona alkaloids. Its 

 chemical reactions are very striking, and for an application of its 

 therapeutic value it awaits investigation from the medical side. 



Another potent drug is the alkaloid brucine. It may be 

 described at diluted strychnine, and is capable of therapeutic 

 application where less powerful action is desired than strychnine 

 would produce. A similar active principle has been found in 

 the bulb of Buphaiic disticha (tox'icaria) Herb., which contains 

 about four per cent, of what appears to be an uncrystallisable 

 alkaloid. The plant has undoubtedly proved fatal, and, although 

 Bushmen are said to have used it as an arrow poison, Smith* 

 mentions it as a remedy for the disease called red-water. 



From a wooded kloof near Collingham. in the Albany Divi- 

 sion, after a four months' search for a plant that was said to 

 have caused the death of a Kafir woman, the Senior Analy^^t 

 at Grahamstown procured bulbs belonging to the Hccmanthns 

 family — whether pnniccns or magnificus could not be definitely 

 settled — from which he succeeded in extracting what appeared 

 to be an alkaloid new to science, in the proportion of aboiit one 

 per cent, of the dried bulb. The usual physiological tests were 

 made, in all cases with fatal results, and it was ultimately proved, 

 by comparing the chemical reactions, that the woman had died 

 after partaking of a plant preparation made from what was in 

 all probability the identical species. In this case the physiological 

 action, although resulting fatally, had not been sufficiently 

 marked in its s'ymptoms to enable the therapeutic possibilities 

 of the plant to be estimated. 



So much for plant alkaloids; then, in several cases, what 

 were evidently glucosides have been met with under similar cir- 

 circumstances. For instances, the plant Trichilia drcgci E. Mey., 

 which caused the death of a Kafir woman, was investigated, and 

 slender needle-shaped crystals, probably of a glucoside, were 

 obtained from it. Another plant containing a glucoside, un- 

 crystallisable apparently in this case, is Acocanthera venenata 

 Don. The glucoside is highly poisonous, arresting the heart in 

 systole, but if its action were under proper control it may 

 possibly serve as a valuable drug somewhat akin to digitalin. .A. 



* " S-A. Materia Medica," 3rd ed-. p- 158. 



