Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
August,  1910.  j 
Standardization  of  Drugs. 
37i 
so  far  as  the  direct  action  on  the  heart  is  concerned,  lends  support 
to  the  suggestion  made  by  Schmiedeberg  many  years  ago  that  all 
the  members  of  the  digitalis  group  depend  on  a  similar  nucleus  for 
their  action. 
The  use  of  this  method  of  biological  assaying  and  its  remarkable 
accuracy  have  lead  us  into  the  investigation  of  some  problems  which 
we  wish  to  mention  at  this  time,  though  they  have  no  immediate 
connection  with  the  subject  of  the  paper.  We  are  employing  it  to 
show  the  degree  of  absorption  which  occurs  after  the  oral  adminis- 
tration of  the  various  members  of  this  group.  The  results  show  that 
absorption  is  exceedingly  irregular  with  all  of  them  which  we  have 
tested.  By  this  means  we  have  also  found  that  the  tincture  of 
digitalis  represents  the  activity  of  the  leaf  fully,  the  marc  left  after 
the  preparation  of  the  tincture  from  a  specimen  of  the  German 
digitalis  in  one  case,  and  from  the  English  in  another,  being  inert. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  infusion,  at  least  a  one  per  cent, 
infusion  showed  the  same  activity  as  the  tincture  diluted  to  the  same 
strength,  and,  as  just  stated,  this  fully  represented  the  leaf.  We 
have  also  found  in  one  case  that  a  carefully  prepared  tincture  of 
strophanthus,  made  according  to  the  Pharmacopceial  process,  repre- 
sented only  about  two-thirds  of  the  total  activity  of  the  seed,  despite 
the  fact  that  percolation  had  been  continued  for  one  week.  The 
greater  part  of  the  strophanthin  which  is  extracted  is  removed 
during  the  first  part  of  the  percolation,  a  part  of  the  strophanthin, 
or  some  related  body,  being  removed  slowly  by  percolation.  The 
total  active  principles  of  the  seed  may  be  removed  completely,  so 
far  as  we  have  been  able  to  determine,  by  infusing  the  finely  pow- 
dered seed  for  one  hour  on  a  boiling  water  bath.1 
The  foregoing  suggests  a  number  of  ways  in  which  the  biologic 
test  may  be  utilized  by  the  retail  pharmacist. 
Several  interesting  points  are  raised  by  the  results  with  strophan- 
thus recorded  in  Table  I.    A  specimen  of  Strophanthus  hispidus  was 
1  Since  this  paper  was  read  at  Richmond  we  have  tested  a  tincture  of 
strophanthus  made  by  the  Pharmacopceial  process  and  found  that  it  did  not 
represent  the  seed  fully,  but  the  marc  yielded  no  active  principle  to  boiling 
water.  Another  tincture  prepared  from  the  same  specimen  of  seed  after 
removing  the  fixed  oil  did  represent  the  seed  fully,  1  c.c.  being  equal  to  more 
than  60  cat  units.  This  suggests  that  the  active  principle  may  undergo  some 
change  even  during  percolation  or  infusion. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  there  is  no  difficulty  in  exhausting  digitalis 
either  by  percolation  or  infusing  the  powdered  leaf. 
