48 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 497. 



mann, in 1871, marked the beginning of mono- 

 graphic work on proximate plant constituents. 

 This work was revised in 1882, but no subse- 

 quent revisions have been made, and no other 

 work has been published to take its place, 

 doubtless owing to the great labor involved 

 in collaborating the extensive researches of 

 the past twenty-five years. Even ' Die Eoh- 

 stoffe des Pflanzenreiches ' by Wiesner, the 

 second edition of which appeared not long ago 

 (1902), required the assistance of a dozen 

 collaborators. In more recent years the tend- 

 ency has been for authors to confine their 

 attention to single groups of plant constitu- 

 ents, as for example, the study of the carbo- 

 hydrates by Tollens; the ethereal oils, by 

 Gildemeister and Hoffmann, etc. One of the 

 earliest of these works was that of Pietet on 

 the ' Chemical Constitution of the Vegetable 

 Alkaloids,' and the present work by Dr. Biddle 

 is not only an English translation, but a re- 

 vision of Pictet's work. 



It is almost a hundred years since SertUrner, 

 an apothecary of Hanover, isolated the first 

 basic organic substance, or alkaloid. He ob- 

 tained from opium a body termed by him 

 morphium, which he compared to ammonia. 

 This subject, however, did not arouse any 

 special interest until about 1817, and during 

 the next twenty years a number of the most 

 important vegetable alkaloids were discovered, 

 including emetine, strychnine, caffeine, qui- 

 nine, nicotine, conine, atropine, aconitine, etc. 

 The complex nature of these alkaloids rend- 

 ered their study difBcult, until Liebig showed 

 that they are merely ammonia bases in which 

 a hydrogen atom is replaced by an organic 

 radical. This view was later confirmed by 

 the classical researches of Wurtz and Hof- 

 mann, which led, nearly fifty years after Ser- 

 tiirner's isolation of morphine, to the first 

 synthesis of an organic base, viz., conine, by 

 Ladenburg. 



It was found that most of the vegetable 

 alkaloids are derivatives of pyridine, a com- 

 pound discovered by Anderson in ' Dippel's 

 oil,' a product obtained by the dry distillation 

 of bones. Not all the alkaloids, however, are 

 related to pyridine, some, as caffeine and theo- 



bromine, being uric acid derivatives, as 

 pointed out by E. Eischer, in 1883. Betaine, 

 muscarine and some others are closely related 

 to the amines of the fatty acids, while still 

 others, as leucine and glutamine, belong to 

 the asparagine group. 



The fact that most of the alkaloids were 

 found to be in the nature of pyridine bases 

 led to the study of the constitution of these 

 bases as found in coal tar. Under the leader- 

 ship of Hofmann research in this particular 

 field was followed with a great deal of en- 

 thusiasm, and to him belongs the credit of 

 first establishing the constitution of an alka- 

 loid, viz., conine, the chief alkaloid of poison 

 hemlock, which later was prepared, as already 

 stated, synthetically by Ladenburg. 



At the present, not only on account of the 

 scientific interest of the subject, but also be- 

 cause of the economic value of these products, 

 a large number of investigators are devoting 

 attention to the study of the chemistry of the 

 alkaloids. The result is a voluminous litera- 

 ture, and it is fortunate for not only students 

 of chemistry and phyto-chemistry, but others 

 as well, that these results have been brought 

 together in the volume at hand. The work 

 is divided into two parts, the first dealing with 

 the artificial bases closely related to the nat- 

 ural alkaloids, and the second with the chem- 

 ical behavior of the alkaloids and the bear- 

 ing of this on their chemical constitution. 

 The book has been brought up to date in most 

 instances, as seen by the incorporation of the 

 brilliant investigations of Ladenburg, Merling 

 and Willstatter on the synthesis of atropine, 

 atropamine, belladonnine, inactive cocaine and 

 tropacocaine; the recent investigations of Von 

 Gerichten and Knorr on morphine and co- 

 deine; the studies of Gadamer as well as 

 Dobbie and Lauder on corydaline; Willstatter 

 and Eourneau's work on lupinine ; Kauwerda's 

 work on cytisine; and also the extensive 

 studies on the alkaloids of jaborandi, tobacco, 

 coffee, etc., by Jowett, Pinner, Pietet, Eischer 

 and various other investigators. There are, 

 however, a number of recent investigations, 

 the results of which are not included, but 

 which would enhance a work of this kind, as 



