Frankforter: the alkaloids of veratrum. 1025 



and chloride. He called the substance veratrine. The method 

 which he used for the extraction is briefly as follows: The 

 triturated seed was treated with 90 per cent alcohol allowed to 

 stand for some hours and filtered. The alcohol was evaporated 

 off when a dark colored varnish-like substance remained. The 

 brown substance was then purified by treating the aqueous 

 solution with dilute nitric acid, and the alkaloids reprecipita- 

 ted by potassium hydroxide. The precipitate formed was 

 filtered off, washed with cold water and taken up in 95 per cent 

 alcohol. On evaporating off the alcohol, a yellow waxy mass 

 remained which contained, besides veratrine, all the alkaloids 

 present in the plant. To separate the sabadillei'ne, the second 

 substance, from the veratrine, the whole mass was digested 

 with hot water. Sabadillei'ne and the waxy substance dissolved. 

 The residue was then treated with ether and that which 

 remained on evaporating the ether was veratrine. This white 

 varnish- like substance was repurified and analyzed. Two 

 analyses gave the following: (1) C= 70.78. H==7.63; (2) C= 

 70.48. H= 7.67, which corresponds to the formula 



C 3 4H 43 No06. 



The aqueous solution upon examination was found to contain 

 besides the crystallized sabadillei'ne, an amorphous substance 

 which was like sabadillei'ne soluble in both water and alcohol. 

 It contained similar properties to sabadilleine wax called saba- 

 dillei'ne hydrate. 



Castner 3 in a repetition of Couerbe's work concluded that the 

 crystals obtained by him were directly or indirectly due to the 

 presence of calcium phosphate in small quantities. 



Ed. Simon 4 in an examination of Veratrum album, isolated two 

 new alkaloids. One he called barytine and the other he named 

 veratrine. The former after carefully examining, he changed 

 to jervine (from jerva, a Spanish name for the deadly poison 

 of the Helleb. alb). The latter he identified as the veratrine 

 of Couerbe. He obtained the alkaloids by treating the material 

 with dilute hydrochloric acid, precipitating with sodium car- 

 bonate, extracting with alcohol and evaporating off the alcohol. 

 They were purified by redissolving in alcohol, treating with 

 animal charcoal, filtering and evaporating off the alcohol. The 

 separation was made by dissolving in alcohol and adding dilute 

 sulphuric acid. The sulphate of jervine is insoluble and can 

 readily be removed by filtration. 



(3) Arch. 8». 



I >■ Pogg. Ann. 11 :' 



