299 
An interesting paper on " Duboisine and its uses in the Colonies " will be found 
in the Pharmaceutical Journal of Australasia for May, 1891. As regards its use, the 
duthor remarks : " It is possible that pure duboisine might yet get some name as a 
mydriatic were it cheap, but naturally the extract, &c., is not able to hold its own 
against hematropine and atropine. The future of duboisia undoubtedly depends either 
on its yielding duboisine very cheaply (for ophthalmic surgery) or in more extended 
trials therapeutically establishing uses not yet suggested for it, but which its pharmaco- 
logical peculiarities give a foundation for.' 5 
A trade report, dated May, 1891, issued by Gehe & Co., of Dresden, stated : 
' Though certainly not quite at a standstill, the employment of duboisine is decreasing. 
Considering the high price of the compound, necessitated by the expensiveness of the 
raw material, this is not surprising, particularly in ophthalmology ; it does not possess 
the slightest advantage over atropine sulphate." 
In Merck's Index for 1889 the price of the pure crystallised alkaloid (duboisine) 
is quoted at 16s. 8d. per 15 grain tube; the price of the amorphous sulphate is quoted 
at about 7s. Gd. for the same quantity. The hydrochlorate is also in the Index, while in 
iii, Nachtrag (August, 1891), the hydrobromide is added. (An account of this 
substance is given in Mercies Jahresbericht, January, 1892, p. 34.) While these prices 
are high and almost prohibitory, I do not say they are excessive, considering the 
difficulties importers have had to contend with in getting supplies of the raw material. 
While the raw material is plentiful enough in some districts, it is not inexhaustible, 
and collectors of the leaves should never cut down the trees, but prune the limbs or 
twigs, an operation which will be advantageous to the tree rather than the reverse. 
Chopping down the trees unnecessarily is killing the goose with the golden eggs, and 
such conduct will bring its own punishment. 
Herr Merck, of Darmstadt, in Germany, has been working a good deal at the 
chemistry of duboisia leaves during the past few years. He has just found a new 
alkaloid in it, Pseudhyoscyamine. The substance is hardly of interest to the general 
reader, but as it is the very latest research in regard to these interesting leaves, 
Australian organic chemistry students may wish to know that it is published in his 
Bericht, 1892, p. 11, while brief English abstracts are to be found in the Pharmaceutical 
Journal (3) xxiii, 808, and the Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry for 1893, 
p. 491. 
Even if, like Alstonia c&nstricta, the crude drug does not realise all the hopes 
which the opthalmic surgeon had placed on it, we have the satisfaction of knowing that 
to the organic chemist it has proved of the highest scientific interest and it is not likely 
that even yet we have come to the end of our knowledge in regard to it. 
****** 
I had written the above historical account, after much research, for the 
Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, for December, 1893, and the account has some 
value even now. 
