48 Professor How on the Hyposulphites 



so well-defined and beautiful a class of salts, as to merit a fuller 

 and more accurate description than they have yet received. 

 Indeed when I commenced their study I was of opinion that 

 they were quite unknown, and it was only when my examina- 

 tion of this series of compounds was nearly completed, that I 

 discovered that one of them, namely, the salt of quinine, had 

 been already described. This description is accompanied by 

 analytical numbers which, as I shall show in the sequel, must 

 have related to a very equivocal specimen, as they are far 

 from concordant with the real composition of the salt in ques- 

 tion ; and it is probable that the materials employed in its 

 formation, by double decomposition, were not pure. 



In addition to their great beauty and their mode of forma- 

 tion by a novel method, which is interesting in itself, these 

 salts present claims for consideration on another ground. The 

 peculiar nature of hyposulphurous acid renders its combina- 

 tions with the alkaloids valuable as a means of establishing 

 or controlling their atomic weight. Since this acid is instable 

 in the free state, it is scarcely capable of forming acid salts, 

 and basic compounds of the alkaloids being unknown, their 

 hyposulphites must be composed in the relation of atom to 

 atom of the proximate constituents. There are few subjects 

 in organic chemistry which have been more discussed by vari- 

 ous experimenters than the atomic weight of the vegetable 

 bases, and most especially is this the case with quinine and 

 cinchonine. Platinum salts of the alkaloids generally are 

 now known not to afford by any means the infallible criterion 

 they were once supposed to do ; and a more certain indicator 

 of the molecular equivalent, particularly of the natural alkalis, 

 has been found in the amount of elements contained in their 

 derived methyl, ethyl, and amyl bases. It is by this means 

 that recent researches have placed it beyond doubt that qui- 

 nine* and cinchonine t have respectively forty and thirty- 

 eight atoms of carbon in their molecules. The hyposulphites 

 of these bodies, as I shall describe them in this paper, are in 

 complete accordance with these results. 



As regards the production of the hyposulphites in general, 



* Strecker, Comptes Rend us. 



t Stahl6chmidt. Annalen der Chemie und I'harmacie, vol. xc, ]>ago 218. 



