115 ECBALLIUM ELATERIUM 



colour when fresh, but by keeping it becomes greyish-green, and 

 ultimately of a yellowish-grey or drab colour. Somo pieces, after 

 being kept for years, acquire a sparkling appearance extern- 

 ally, from the presence of very minute crystals. Elaterium 

 has a finely granular fracture ; an acrid and bitter taste ; and 

 a faint tea-like odour. It does not effervesce with acids ; 

 a cooled deccotion is not perceptibly affected, or but very slightly 

 so, by the addition of a solution of iodine ; it yields half its 

 weight to boiling rectified spirit, and this solution concentrated 

 and added to warm solution of potash, yields on cooling not less 

 than twenty per cent, of colourless crystals of elaterine, its acitve 

 principle. Inferior kinds of elaterium are usually darker coloured, 

 harder, more curled, and break with difficulty or with a close 

 resinous fracture. The above remarks especially apply to English 

 Elaterium, but this drug is also imported from Malta, and is then 

 known in commerce as Maltese Elaterium. This kind is com- 

 monly in larger flakes or cakes, and of a paler colour than that 

 prepared in England. It is also frequently mixed with starch or 

 chalk, or with both these substances ; hence such specimens either 

 effervesce with dilute hydrochloric acid, or a cooled decoction 

 becomes blue with solution of iodine, or both these reactions may 

 take place, neither of which, as already seen, occur with the 

 best English Elaterium. As a general rule, Maltese elaterium is 

 inferior to English, although it may be occasionally found of 

 good quality. 



The active constituent of elaterium is elaterine or elaterin 

 (the ecbalin of Williams). This is best obtained, according to 

 Fliickiger and Hanbury, by exhausting the drug with chloroform, 

 and adding ether to the solution when it forms a crystalline deposit 

 of elaterine, which should be purified by further washing with a 

 little ether and recrystallizing from chloroform. In this way they 

 obtained 33*6 per cent, of elaterine from the best English Elaterium 

 and 27*6 from the Maltese kind. Good commercial elaterium 

 ordinarily yields from 20 to 30 per cent, of elaterine. Elaterine 

 crystallizes in colourless hexagonal scales or prisms ; it is readily 

 soluble in chloroform or boiling alcohol, and is insoluble in water 



