BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE, NORWICH. 411 



Haiiey finds that its activity is destroyed by fixed caustic ises. 

 alkalies an observation previously made, as you will remember, 

 by Dr. Garrod, who also pointed out the impropriety of com- 

 bining hyoscyamus with a caustic alkaline solution, such as 

 Liquor potassce. The action of an alkali on atropine is not Henbane, 

 instantaneous, in fact the power of the atropine is not apparently 

 diminished when freshly mixed. If, as is probable, the same 

 observation holds good for hyoscyamus, it allows of that drug 

 being administered with potash, provided the two are mixed at 

 the moment of taking the dose, or perhaps it would be still 

 better to give them separately. 



The analysis of jalap was the subject of a communication made jalap, 

 at our last meeting, and it is one which seems still deserving 

 attention. Messrs. T. and H. Smith assert that, in many trials, 

 they have never obtained of the resin more than 15 per cent., 

 while our colleague Mr. Umney, has recently obtained 21 '5 per 

 cent, from the Vera Cruz drug. Dr. Squibb considers that 

 powdered jalap, which does not yield over 12 per cent., of dry 

 resin should be rejected as unfit for use, an opinion I cannot 

 endorse, for I have found Vera Cruz jalap of undoubted goodness 

 which yielded but 11 per cent., and a similar result was obtained 

 by my friend Mr. Broughton. 



The transition from jalap to rhubarb is natural, at least in Rhubarb, 

 the popular mind; and I notice this latter drug in order to 

 remind you of the interesting account of the cultivation of 

 rhubarb in England, recently published by Mr. Usher in the 

 Journal of the Society of Arts. Although the directions of the 

 Pharmacopoeia preclude the employment in an English pharmacy 

 of any other rhubarb than that of China (and most of us are 

 practically unacquainted with any other), yet no such limitation 

 extends to other countries, and that British rhubarb is appreciated 

 somewhere is proved by the fact alleged by Mr. Usher, that the 

 demand is greater than the supply. The disappearance from 

 commerce of the old-fashioned Eussian rhubarb, a drug that 

 was of uniform excellence, has been followed by a remarkable 

 alteration in that shipped from China. For the last two or three 

 years this latter has been singularly bad in quality, whole chests 



