MWA TURE 
49 
THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1886 
THE VEAR-BOOK OF PHARMACY 
Year-Book of Pharmacy, 1884. (London: J. and A. 
Churchill, 1884.) 
“THIS volume contains the transactions of the British 
Pharmaceutical Conference at Hastings in August 
1884, in addition to abstracts of papers relating to 
pharmacy, materia medica, and chemistry, from July 1, 
1883, to June 30, 1884. The work is of course especially 
intended for chemists and druggists, but it also contains 
some information to general readers, and as this might 
be apt to be overlooked from the special nature of the 
work, we shall extract from it somewhat more largely than 
we might otherwise do. Amongst the most striking facts 
it contains is an observation of Sachs regarding the effect 
of light on plants, mentioned by Mr. Williams, President 
of the Conference, in his address. This observation is 
not only interesting in itself but it appears to give a 
reason for the rules which the herbalists, centuries ago, 
laid down for the collection of medicinal plants, and which 
in modern times have been regarded as simple nonsense, 
and have consequently been abandoned. The herbalists 
were particular about collecting their herbs at certain 
hours of the day or night, and even at special phases of 
the moon. We have not yet got any exact information 
regarding the effect of the moon upon the chemical com- 
position of plants, but Sachs’s observations show that the 
amount of starch present in the leaf of any given plant 
varies considerably under different circumstances. In 
direct sunshine and under otherwise favourable circum- 
stances, starch is formed very rapidly ; but it generally 
disappears entirely during the night, so that a leaf col- 
lected in the evening will prove full of starch, while 
another leaf of the same plant collected before sunrise 
will not show a trace. But even in direct sunshine, with 
all the necessary warmth and moisture, the plant will not 
form starch if the air in which it is growing be deprived 
of carbonic acid by means of caustic soda. The method 
of ascertaining the presence of starch in a leaf is very 
simple. ‘‘The leaf to be examined is first plunged into 
boiling water for about ten minutes, then taken out and 
digested in alcohol for about the same time (methylated | 
spirit answers perfectly well). This treatment extracts 
the whole of the colouring-matter (chlorophyll), and leaves 
the leaf perfectly white. The leaf is now placed in an 
alcoholic solution of iodine, and the presence or absence 
of starch is demonstrated in a few minutes. The absorp- 
tion of iodine commences at the edges, and soon colours | 
the leaf blue-black if much starch be present, or brown if 
the quantity of starch be but small. The venation of the 
leaf appears as a pale network on a dark ground, render- 
ing it a very beautiful object, but all my efforts to preserve 
a specimen beyond a few hours have hitherto failed.” The 
variations in the amount of starch in the leaves at different | 
periods of the twenty-four hours are peculiarly interesting 
as rendering it probable that the amount of alkaloidal 
or other active principles may also vary in a similar way. 
Since the publication of this book other researches have 
been made which render such a variation all the more 
probable inasmuch as they show that some of the | 
VOL. XXXIV.—No. 864 
poisonous alkaloids formed by the putrefaction of albu- 
minous substances are identical with those occurring in 
some plants. 
In the chemical section of this Year-Book there are 
several articles on putrefaction-alkaloids or ptomaines. 
These alkaloids were shortly after their discovery sup- 
posed to differ in certain respects from the alkaloids 
produced by plants, but the points of difference on which 
reliance was at first placed in order to distinguish between 
alkaloids which might be formed in a dead body and 
poisons of vegetable origin which might have been ad- 
ministered for the purpose of producing death have now 
been shown to be untrustworthy for this purpose. 
Amongst the most important of the researches on this 
subject are those of Brieger, some of which are abstracted 
in this Year-Book, and others of which have been since 
published in his works (“ Ueber Ptomaine ” and “ Weitere 
Untersuchungen tber Ptomaine,” Berlin, Hirschwald). 
The abstract of another paper by Poehl in this Year-Book 
contains interesting information regarding alkaloids 
formed by the decomposition of rye-meal. His results 
are that ergot and mould have a peptonising action on 
the albuminous matters of the meal. The degree of 
putrefaction of albumens is directly proportional to their 
peptonisation. In the first stages of putrefaction the 
decomposition of albumens is greater in ergot meal than 
in mouldy or pure meal. But in the more advanced 
stages these differences are not so marked. Various 
alkaloidal products were obtained both from pure and 
tainted meal after they had been allowed to putrefy. This 
fact may be of considerable importance in regard to the 
action of alcoholic drinks. Guareschi and Mosso in a 
paper abstracted in this Year-Book describe the methods 
by which they obtained from putrefying fibrine an alkaloid 
having an action similar to curare. In another work, 
which is not abstracted here (“ Les Ptomaines,” Premiére 
Partie, Rome, Turin, Florence, H. Loescher), they 
mention that one of the difficulties they had to contend 
with was the presence of organic alialoids in different 
kinds of alcohol. If we consider that a great deal of the 
spirits used for ordinary consumption are made of so- 
called silent spirit flavoured with various substances, and 
that silent spirit is also used in fortifying wines, it is 
evident that the purity of this spirit is of very consider- 
able importance ; but we believe that silent spirit is some- 
times obtained by the fermentation of grain which has 
become mouldy or decomposed to such an extent as to be 
useless for food, and volatile alkaloids formed during its 
decomposition will pass over in the process of distillation, 
and being thus present in the spirit so produced may 
injuriously modify its action. 
The most interesting of the other facts contained in 
this Year-Book are those which refer to the synthesis of 
organic alkaloids. Hofmann has shown that piperine, 
the alkaloid of pepper, can be built up from pyridine, a 
coal-tar base, and that piperidine, one of the intermediate 
compounds, which is also obtained with piperic acid when 
natural piperine is split up by potash, is probably a 
stepping-stone to the formation of conine and atropine. 
It was mentioned in a former Year-Book that caffeine, 
the alkaloid of tea and coffee, can be prepared from theo- 
bromine, the alkaloid of cocoa, which in its turn can be 
obtained from xanthine, a substance which is present in 
