— 8i — 



Ester and alcohol were not determined in the oil itself, but after 

 treatment of the latter with neutral sodium sulphite solution and 

 sodium bicarbonate in a special sample which had thereby been freed 

 from citral. The figures obtained with the use of oil free from alde- 

 hyde were then calculated for the total oil. 



Wormwood Oil. According to the chemical examinations 1 ) 

 made at the time in our New York laboratory, normal wormwood 

 oil contains thujone, thujyl alcohol (free and as ester), phellandrene, 

 pinene (?), cadinene, and a blue oil of unknown composition; thujone 

 forms the principal constituent. Some wormwood oils, however, 

 originating from the South of France behaved quite differently 2 ). Of 

 oil from wild wormwood Roure-Bertrand Fils examined two self- 

 distilled samples, which originated from the mountains near Caussols 

 (Alpes Maritimes) — one sample dating from 1900, the other from 1905. 



The analysis gave the following results: — 





1900 



1905 



ester .... 



9>o% 



5,5% 



combined alcohol 



7.o% 



4,3% 



free alcohol . 



7i,9% 



76,3% 



thujone 



8,4% 



3,o% 



These oils consequently contained only small quantities thujone; 

 their principal constituent was thujyl alcohol. An oil which originated 

 from plants sown in Grasse, and had also been distilled by the above- 

 named firm, had the following composition: ester 35,6%, combined 

 alcohol 2 7,9°/ , free alcohol i2,3°/ , thujone 7,6 °/ . In this oil the 

 chief constituent was therefore also thujyl alcohol, but it contained 

 considerably more combined alcohol than the oil obtained from the 

 plants growing wild. 



Wormseed Oil, American. From a reprint from the "Medi- 

 zinische Klinik" we abstract a communication made by H. Brtining 3 ). 

 The American wormseed oil, which in America is at the present day 

 still used with good results as officinal anthelmintic, has here, strange 

 to say, fallen entirely into oblivion. A pharmacological study by the 

 author, at whose disposal we had placed the material for examination, 

 had the result that live ascarides were in a short time destroyed in 

 water or a solution of common salt or Ringer's solution at 3 8° C, 

 with which the oil had been mixed, whilst the control parasites for 

 a long time continued to move about. Even with solutions of 1 in 5000 



*) Report April 1897, 47; comp. also Gildemeister and Hoffmann, 

 The Volatile Oils, p. 685; further Charabot, Bull. Soc. chim. III. 23 (1900), 474. 



2 ) Berichte, Roure-Bertrand Fils, April 1906, 36. 



8 ) H. Br lining, Die Behandlung der Askaridiasis. Reprint from the "Medizinische 

 Klinik", 1906, No. 29. 



6 



