24i BACTERIAL POISONS. 



but Beieger has shown that the platmum salt of choline, 

 as well as its hydrochloride, can be heated with fifteen or 

 thirty per cent., or even concentrated, hydrochloric acid for 

 six or eight hours without undergoing any change into 

 ueurine, thus disproving the results obtained by Guam. 

 E. Schmidt has confirmed Brieger's observations in 

 regard to the resistance of choline to decomposition by 

 acids, but he has gone further, and has shown that what 

 the action of acids has failed to do is readily accomplished 

 through the agency of bacteria. He found that choline 

 chloride, when allowed to stand with hay infusion, or with 

 dilute blood for fourteen days at 30°-35°, it almost entirely 

 decomposed, yielding large quantities of trimethylamine 

 and a base, the platinochloride of which resembles in form 

 and solubility the double salt of neurine, and possesses a 

 similar physiological action. Choline lactate in hay infu- 

 sion developed an odor of trimethylamine in twelve hours, 

 but at the end of fourteen days a good deal of choline was 

 still present. In this case no neurine was present, but 

 instead a homologous base was found, which can be obtained 

 synthetically by the action of trimethylamine on allyl 

 bromide. According to Meyer, of Marburg, this base 

 does not possess the muscarine-like action of ueurine, but 

 resembles more closely pilocarpine. 



Brieger (I., 59) had unsuccessfully tried to transform 

 choline into neurine by putrefaction. He observed that the 

 choline decomposed with extreme slowness, even when the 

 putrefaction was carried on at a higher temperature, yield- 

 ing only trimethylamine. Wuktz (1868) showed that 

 dilute solutions of free choline can be heated to boiling 

 without any perceptible decomposition. Concentrated 

 solutions, however, decompose with the formation of tri- 

 methylamine and glycol, C2H/OH)2 (see page 190). The 

 decomposition of choline was studied somewhat by 

 Mauthner (1873), who confirmed Wurtz's observation 

 that choline was scarcely decomposed by boiling water, and 

 he showed that when exposed to the action of decomposing 

 blood it yielded trimethylamine. The results obtained by 

 K. Hasebroek {Zeitschrift f. Physiol. Ohem., 12, 151, 1888) 



