PITURIE. 
§§ 344-346-] 
or even swallowing accidentally a quid of tobacco. 1 A ptomaine has 
been discovered similar to nicotine. Wolckenhaar separated also an 
alkaloid not unlike nicotine from the corpse of a woman addicted to 
intemperate habits ; but this base was not poisonous, nor did it give 
any crystals when an ethereal solution was added to an ether solution 
of iodine. It will be well always to support the chemical evidence by 
tests on animal life, since the intensely poisonous action of nicotine 
seems not to be shared by the nicotine-like ptomaines. 
§ 344. Antidote to Nicotine. — C. Zalackas, 2 in experiments on 
animals with eserine and strychnine, finds that neither of these alkaloids 
is antagonistic to any extent to nicotine ; he, however, obtained good 
results from the expressed juice of Nasturtium officinale, two injections 
of which completely counteracted the effect of a fatal dose of nicotine 
(25 mgrms.) in a rabbit. 
3. PITURIE. 3 
§ 345. Piturie is a liquid, nicotine-like alkaloid, obtained from the Duboisia 
hopwoodii, a small shrub or tree belonging to the natural order Solanacew, indigenous 
in Australia. The natives mix piturie leaves with ashes from some other plant, and 
chew them. Piturie is obtained by extracting the plant with boiling water acidified 
with sulphuric acid, concentrating the liquid by evaporation, and then alkalising 
and distilling with caustic soda, and receiving the distillate in hydrochloric acid. The 
solution of the hydrochlorate is afterwards alkalised and shaken up with ether, which 
readily dissolves out the piturie. The ether solution of piturie is evaporated to dryness 
in a current of hydrogen, and the crude piturie purified by distillation in hydrogen, or ■ 
by changing it into its salts, and again recovering, etc. It is clear and colourless when 
pure and fresh, but becomes yellow or brown when exposed to air and light. It boils 
and distils at 243° to 244°. It is soluble in all proportions in alcohol, water, and ether ; 
its taste is acrid and pungent; it is volatile at ordinary temperatures, causing white 
fumes with hydrochloric acid ; it is very irritating to the mucous membranes, having 
a smell like nicotine at first, and then, when it becomes browner, like pyridine. It forms 
salts with acids, but the acetate, sulphate, and hydrochlorate are varnish-like films 
having no traces of crystallisation ; the oxalate is a crystalline salt. Piturie gives 
precipitates with mercuric chloride, cupric sulphate, gold chloride, mercur-potassic 
iodide, tannin, and an alcoholic solution of iodine. If an ethereal solution of iodine 
is added to an ethereal solution of piturie, a precipitate of yellowish-red needles, readily 
soluble in alcohol, is deposited. The iodine compound melts at 110°, while the iodine 
compound of nicotine melts at 100°. Piturie is distinguished from coniine by its 
aqueous solution not becoming turbid either on heating or on the addition of chlorine 
water ; it differs from picoline in specific gravity, picoline being -9613 specific gravity 
at 0°, and piturie sinking in water ; it differs from aniline by not being coloured by 
chlorinated lime. Rothera ( Bio-chem. Journal, 1910, v. 193) adduces strong evidence 
of the identity of piturie with nicotine. The physiological action is in no way 
different from that of nicotine. 
4. SPARTEINE. 
§ 34(5. In 1851 Stenhouse 4 separated a poisonous volatile alkaloid from Spartium 
scoparium , the common broom, to which he gave the name of sparteine. At the 
same time a crystalline non-poisonous substance, scoparin, was discovered. 
1 In an experiment of Dragendorff’s, nicotine is said to have been detected in 
35 grms. of the saliva of a person who had half an hour previously smoked a cigar. 
2 Compt. Rend., 1905. 
3 See “ The Alkaloid from Piturie,” by Prof. Leversidge, Chem. News, March 18 
and 25, 1881. 4 Phil. Trans., 1851. 
