August 24,1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
143 
“ If it is permitted to us to express a general opinion 
at tlie conclusion of our studies, we would say that 
the introduction into therapeutics of the crystallized 
principle of digitalis has appeared to us premature 
in the present state of our knowledge, and we do 
not hesitate to conclude with one of our learned 
professors, M. Bussy, that at present the best 
practical means of concentrating in a small space 
the active and efficacious properties of the plant is 
by the process known as that of the Codex of 1860. 
This process, though it does not give a definite pro¬ 
duct, and one absolutely pure from a chemical point 
of view, has not the less furnished to the thera¬ 
peutist a preparation useful on the same grounds as 
numbers of officinal preparations, which seem to us 
to offer to the practitioner at least as great a gua¬ 
rantee as the employment of the tincture or the ex¬ 
tract of digitalis. We cannot forget that in these 
opinions we agree with Soubeiran, Orfila, Hayer, 
Boucliardat, and Bouilland, opinions consecrated for 
more than twenty years by therapeutical science.” 
This thesis is a new proof of the danger of 
premature assertions in chemical science. Many 
hundreds of chemists have analysed digitaline, and 
have affirmed the impossibility of extracting from it 
a definite crystallized substance; a pharmaceutist, 
M. Nativelle, gives them the direct denial in attempt¬ 
ing and realizing this impossibility; in his turn he 
declares—and with him and after him another 
learned pharmaceutist, M. Buignet—that this crys¬ 
tallized digitaline is extracted by treatment with 
alcohol to the exclusion of exhaustion by aqueous 
solution, and that in every digitaline hitherto pre¬ 
pared, including the digitaline of the Codex, not a 
trace of crystallized digitaline could be obtained; 
but all these scientific allegations vanish before the 
discovery of Dr. Blaquart. His crystallized digi¬ 
taline is obtained from the digitaline of the Codex. 
In solution it is more active than that of M. Nativelle, 
which, according to M. Boucher, is not certainly 
homogeneous. Under the microscope, and in con¬ 
tact -with reagents, the digitalines of Blaquart 
and Nativelle appear and act identically the same. 
The report of M. Buignet to the Academy is there¬ 
fore weakened in one of its important assertions, 
viz., that alcohol at 50° is alone capable of extract¬ 
ing from digitalis its active crystallized principle. 
What becomes then of the watery infusion of leaves 
of digitalis, and by what magic have the doctors 
from all time obtained a sedative from this simple 
decoction ? But does it signify ? Contradiction has I 
always been one of our least faults. The report of ! 
M. Buignet is again criticized by M. Blaquart on 
the subject of the process for extracting the crystal¬ 
lized digitaline of M. Nativelle. This process, 
followed with the most scrupulous care, and in its 
most minute details, did not enable Dr. Blaquart to 
arrive at the result so skilfully reported by the, 
learned reporter of the Academy. Some few crystals 
lost in a green mass were the result of three experi¬ 
ments on fifteen kilograms of digitalis. This want 
of success on the part of Dr. Blaquart is not solitary; 
similar attempts have been equally unfruitful in 
many of the laboratories of Paris. We must, with¬ 
out doubt, attribute this failure to the want of a 
skilful tour-de-main. But skill aided by patience, 
thanks to a coming enlightenment, will, perhaps, 
some day bring crystals of digitaline to all chemists. 
Whilst waiting, the possession of some Nativelle 
prisms is a rare piece of fortune. We hope very 
soon to be able to offer them. The Academy 
has already obtained some, three phials of this rara 
avis were brought a short time since to the bureau, 
and M. Nativelle has placed them at the disposition 
of the medical body for experiments. 
When a substance is of such easy extraction, is it 
not somewhat strange that a year is necessary in 
order that a few grammes should be prepared? 
However this may be, the academical report is 
silent on this point. Is it in the thousandth or in 
the ten thousandth degree that digitalis gives its crys¬ 
tallized alkaloid ? Until more fully informed, Dr. 
Blaquart considers crystallized digitaline as a 
curiosity of the laboratory; and if it is taken into 
account that the digitaline of the Codex {digitaleine 
of M. Nativelle), his crystallized digitaline, that 
of Dr. Blaquart, the pyrodigitalic acid of Dr. 
Boucher are all equally coloured green by 
hydrochloric acid,—where shall we then find 
a certain characteristic to distinguish between 
these four poisons in granules ? Is this not the 
weak point in the armour? Digitaline is only ac¬ 
ceptable to the palate of the invalid hidden in sugar; 
it has to be previously pulverized and mixed in a 
syrup or a mucilage. It must therefore acquire for the 
legal physician, the therapeutist, and the pharma¬ 
ceutist, a special character, an original reaction, 
so that it may be called by its right name. Other¬ 
wise there will be the confusion of the digitalines. It 
is true that—their physiological action, in spite of a 
pretended activity four times as great, being iden¬ 
tical (to within the difference of a few contractions 
of the heart)—after the numerous experiments of 
Blaquart and Boucher, there is reason, with M. 
Bussy, to hold to the digitaline of the Codex until 
a new discovery, and to ask, with Professor Gubler, 
what use can a crystallization have in a medica¬ 
ment of which it weakens more than it increases the 
action. Will not all these chemical conflicts con¬ 
cerning digitaline result in leading many practi¬ 
tioners to the galenic preparations of this plant, 
and at first to its leaves freshly pulverized? For, 
besides throwing doubts into the minds of the medi¬ 
cal body, it is rendered more and more impossible 
for the pharmaceutist to do the work of his ten 
fingers. Alkaloids cannot be produced except on a 
large scale; and if year after all the materia medica 
is to be transformed into very poisonous but beauti¬ 
ful little crystals, and if for every poison crystals 
of many kinds must be obtained, the great chemists 
would become artists in poison, and the pharma¬ 
ceutists then* humble intermediaries. All this detracts 
nothing from the honour due to M. Nativelle, whose 
great power as an analyst is the admiration of 
our laboratories. If among the numbers of modern 
chemists he holds, and has held for many years, 
a place above the ordinary level, if he has consecrated 
his long career by a discovery justly acknowledged, 
the merit is not less for a young doctor who, led by 
the good tradition of his first master in chemistry, 
M. Jacquelain of the Central School, has himself 
alone elucidated the question of the digitaline of 
the Codex, by retaining it, contrary to all the as¬ 
sertions and all the experiments of the chemists, 
including even M. Nativelle, as the crystallized 
digitaline. 
This is the principal object of the thesis of Dr. 
Blaquart, and it must be read to know all the in¬ 
teresting points of the study of digitaline, now made 
by him as clear as day. 
