584 
ON THE ALKALOIDS IN CHINCHONA BARK. 
Reynolds’, 13, Briggate, March. 27th, 1865. .Eight out of thirteen were present. It was 
resolved to petition the House of Commons in favour of the Pharmacy Act, 1865. The 
petition was signed by seven pharmaceutical chemists and their assistants, and presented 
by Mr. Baines.” 
I am sure that the gentleman who edits the ‘Chemist and Druggist’ would not intention¬ 
ally propagate such false news, and I trust that he will feel bound to publish the name of 
the person who furnished him with this bundle of misstatements. 
The pharmaceutists of Leeds have consistently advocated the adoption of a liberal policy 
towards non-members, as indicated by their resolutions respecting the Pharmacy Bill in 
May, 1864, and renewed at the present meeting. They have done this while many of their 
brethren in other towns have asserted that animosity against the Pharmaceutical Society 
was the leading idea with the supporters of the United Society. But they saw in Sir John 
Shelley’s Bill a proof that it is much easier to find fault than to act better than those whom 
we blame. As soon as the United Society commenced its constructive efforts, its members 
perpetrated a blunder transcending all tlie faults of the older society, for they let slip the 
labours of a quarter of a century in trying to supersede the Pharmaceutical Society, and 
also staked all upon their claim for privileges, which it was clear the Legislature could not 
grant, even were vested interests the only obstacle. Such a policy is revolution, and not 
reform. The pharmaceutists of Leeds saw this, and represented it in the proper quarters, 
supporting Sir F. Kelly’s Bill, as being capable of all modifications that could be reasonably 
demanded. 
I would ask whether the organ of the United Society will take the responsibility of the 
perversion of facts now exposed, or will it let us know the origin, of such mischievous news ? 
R. R. 
ORIGINAL AND EXTRACTED ARTICLES. 
MICROSCOPICAL RESEARCHES ON THE ALKALOIDS, AS 
EXISTING IN CHINCHONA BARK. 
BY J. E. HOWARD, F.L.S., ETC. 
In the valuable and very interesting paper “ On microscopical research in re¬ 
lation to Pharmacy,” by Messrs. Deane and Brady, read at the last Pharma¬ 
ceutical Conference, your readers will have been enabled to see how much 
assistance may be thus rendered in the discrimination of vegetable products, 
especially of the varieties of opium. Reference is made in the same paper to 
the existence, as visible under the microscope, of the Chinchona alkaloids, in situ , 
in the bark. I am far from supposing that any such practical application can 
be made of this discovery, which I announced in my ‘ Nueva Quinologia ’ in 
the year 1861 , for the following reason :—the combinations of the alkaloids 
with kinic acid are extremely soluble, so that in any bark in which these are 
the prevalent constituents, it is very difficult to ascertain any crystalline appear¬ 
ance. But this is not the case in all chinchona barks, as for instance in the 
commercial red bark, the Ch. succirubra , in which the prevalent combination 
appears to be of a different kind. It is in reference to a very fine specimen of 
this red bark that I published the following observations :— 
“ In order to gain as much information as possible from the rich bark under 
consideration, I made sections of a portion for microscopic investigation, and 
was rewarded by some appearances which I had not before seen. The eye was 
at once arrested by very numerous stellate groups of crystals, diffused irregularly 
throughout the substance of the bark. I thought at first that they must be 
raphides ; but further investigation led me to see that they are entirely soluble 
in spirit of wine, and even in ether, that they polarize the ray of light, and thus 
much more resemble combinations of the alkaloids than those bodies which are 
called raphides, and which are understood to be composed of salts of lime and 
magnesia, insoluble in the media above named. 
u The crystals are arranged in the substance of the bark indeterminately, and 
without any reference to the organic structure of the bark. They are not formed 
in the cells, but cross these in every direction,—radiating generally from some 
