484  American  Pharmaceutical  Association.  (A™ -JT'-  Vh "" 1 
1    ^  (     October,  190f<. 
Some  of  the  Distinguishing  Morphological  Characters  of 
Belladonna  and  Scopolia. 
By  Henry  Kraemer. 
This  paper  appears  on  p.  459  of  this  Journal. 
The  Estimation  of  Phenol. 
By  W.  A.  Puckner  and  A.  H.  Clark. 
The  experiments  here  described  were  undertaken  with  a  view  of 
evolving  a  satisfactory  method  for  the  isolation  and  estimation  of 
phenol  in  pharmaceutical  products,  such  as  tablets,  powders,  etc., 
when  other  substances  which  interfere  with  a  direct  estimation  are 
present. 
Most  of  the  experiments  were  made  on  tablets  containing  bismuth, 
opium,  aromatic  powder,  and  phenol  or  on  mixtures  containing 
these  substances  in  known  proportions.  As  a  means  of  isolating 
phenol,  distillation  first  suggested  itself.  Some  of  the  substance  was 
placed  in  a  distilling  flask,  water  added,  the  liquid  rendered  acid, 
and  then  distilled  nearly  to  dryness.  The  phenol  in  the  distillate 
was  determined  by  the  bromine  absorption  method  of  the  U.  S.  P. 
Results  in  this  way  were  not  quite  satisfactory,  as  it  was  thought 
impossible  to  distill  all  the  phenol  and  keep  the  volume  of  the 
distillate  within  such  limits  as  would  permit  an  accurate  estimation 
of  the  phenol  present  therein. 
Extracting  the  powdered  substance  with  ether,  removing  the 
phenol  from  the  ether  solution  by  shaking  with  a  solution  of  potas- 
sium hvdroxide  and  determining  the  phenol  in  this  liquid  gave 
results  which  were  uniformly  high  when  applied  to  mixtures  of 
known  composition.  This  was  found  to  be  due  to  the  use  of  ether, 
and  the  method  accordingly  abandoned. 
Extracting  the  powdered  substance  with  water  either  by  perco- 
lation or  by  maceration,  and  after  standing  some  time  removing  an 
aliquot  portion  of  the  clear  supernatant  fluid,  and  in  this  aqueous 
solution  determining  phenol,  was  tried.  The  results  again  were  high  ; 
this  and  also  the  difficulty  in  nitration,  uncertainty  in  measure- 
ments, etc.,  lead  to  the  abandonment  of  this  method. 
Extraction  after  the  manner  outlined  above  for  ether,  substi- 
tuting chloroform  for  the  ether,  gave  results  which  were  very 
uniform,  and  on  mixtures  of  known  compositions  were  entirely 
