PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION B. — SUB-SECTION, PHARMACY. 133 



this difficulty still prevails. Not a little of the confusion, again, was 

 due to the almost reckless manner in which successive observers 

 bestowed names suggestive of chemical individuals on the crudest of 

 extracts, or renamed substances isolated by their predecessors, through 

 failure to compare their own results mth those already published. 

 As instances of these tendencies may be cited, on the one hand, the 

 name " ergotin " still used, especially in German literature, which 

 was assigned in turn by Wiggers, Bonjean, Wenzell, Wernich Yvon, 

 and others, in each case to a quite different kind of crude extract ; 

 and, on the other hand, the names picrosclerotin and secalin, given by 

 different observers to the one ergot alkaloid, which, at that time, had 

 been obtained in pure condition, and which Tanret, who first isolated 

 it, had named " ergotinine." 



This isolation of ergotinine by Tanret in 1875 may be regarded 

 as the first step of real importance towards the recognition of the 

 specific active principle of the drug. It is remarkable, indeed, how 

 nearly the problem was solved at this comparatively early date in the 

 history of its investigation. Tanret's ergotinine has been found, as 

 already mentioned, by several subsequent observers, and its formula has 

 now been definitely settled by the analyses made by Barger and Carr, 

 whose correction of that originally given has been confirmed by Tanret 

 himself. In one respect Tanret's results have not been substantiated 

 by recent work. Finding that ergot yielded, in addition to the easily 

 crystallizing alkaloid, a further quantity of alkaloid giving practically 

 identical chemical reactions, but refractory to crystallization, Tanret . 

 regarded this latter as an amorphous form of the same alkaloid. 



In this assumption he was undoubtedly in error, the amorphous 

 alkaloid being, indeed, closely related to, and easily formed from the 

 crystalline, but not chemically identical with it. 



The failure to recognise this difference, though a small point in 

 itself, had a far-reaching effect on the pharmacological history of the 

 drug. On the basis of clinical results, obtained either with the 

 amorphous alkaloid, or with acid solutions of the crystalline alkaloid, 

 in which the amorphous is rapidly formed, Tanret concluded that he 

 had isolated the active alkaloid of ergot. When, however, his alkaloid 

 was subjected to pharmacological experiment by Kobert, the crystalline 

 ergotinine, as being that of which the purity could be guaranteed, was 

 naturally taken, and injected in fresh solution. Kobert rightly con- 

 cluded that it had practically no activity ; and since, according to 

 Tanret, the amorphous alkaloid was chemically identical with it, 

 ergotinine was dismissed as of no pharmacological interest, though it 

 still retained some vogue in practical therapeutics. As a result the 

 chemical investigation of the drug was again given over to the prepara- 

 tion and testing of crude resinous products, though the work of Kobert 

 in particular did something towards determining the manner by which 



