9 3 



Scientific Proceedings (28). 



protagon for some time." 1 Wilson and Cramer attribute the 

 hypothetical decomposing effect of warm alcohol on protagon to 

 an assumed " hydrolyzing (!) action." They present no facts, 

 however, that justify this guess. 



Wilson and Cramer have prepared protagon by a new method, 

 in which the brain tissue is extracted first with cold 96 per cent, 

 alcohol, later with cold ether, for the complete removal of choles- 

 terin and lecithin. The brain mass remaining after this treatment 

 is then pulverized and extracted with boiling absolute alcohol. 

 " The boiling solvent is poured on the powder and the mixture 

 kept boiling for one or two minutes in a warm bath, moving the 

 mixture all the time. 1 The alcoholic solution is filtered through a 

 hot-water funnel ; the filtrate is allowed to drop into a vessel cooled 

 in ice. The same process of extraction is repeated twice. The 

 crude crystalline product is washed with ether and dried in vacuo. 

 Recrystallization is effected by pouring boiling absolute alcohol 

 on the sample of protagon. The solution is kept boiling for one 

 minute and then filtered as before." 



The protagon products prepared by Wilson and Cramer by this 

 method contained between 0.9 per cent, and 1.0 per cent, of phos- 

 phorus, after the fourth or fifth recrystallization. The general 

 composition of their preparations is about the same as that of the 

 products previously made by Cramer 3 by a method which, they 

 assume, as quoted above, involved decomposition and the ultimate 

 isolation, therefore, of a mixture. 



Wilson and Cramer refer with great satisfaction to the " con- 

 stancy of the chemical composition" of their products as some- 

 thing very striking and important, but, as they fail to give such 

 details of their treatment as the mutual proportions of the protagon 

 and the solvent employed in their recrystallizations, we are not at 

 all impressed by the analytic constancy referred to. 



As was stated above, Wilson and Cramer believe that Gies and 

 his collaborators unknowingly subjected their protagons to decom- 

 position by the " hydrolyzing action " of the warm alcohol used 

 in the fractional recrystallization experiments that yielded the re- 



1 Italics our own. 

 J Italics our own. 



'Cramer : Journal of Physiology, 1904, xxxi, p. 31. 



