494  American  Pharmaceutical  Association.  {Aloctober,liSm' 
Examination  of  Podophyllin. 
By  H.  ivl.  Gordin  and  C.  G.  Merrell. 
The  experiments  of  the  authors  tend  to  show  that  though  we 
have  no  means  at  present  to  isolate  quantitatively  the  active  princi- 
ple or  principles  of  podophyllin,  we  can  without  difficulty  tell 
whether  a  given  sample  of  podophyllin  is  adulterated  to  a  consider- 
able extent  or  not.  If  we  put  up  the  following  requirements  for 
pure  podophyllin  it  would  be  very  difficult  for  an  unscrupulous 
manufacturer  to  adulterate  the  resin  so  skilfully  that  the  product 
will  answer  all  the  following  requirements.  It  would,  for  example, 
be  easy  to  adulterate  podophyllin  with  another  alcohol  soluble  sub- 
stance, or  an  ether-soluble  substance,  etc.,  but  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  find  a  substance  that  will  behave  toward  the  following  require- 
ments exactly  like  podophyllin.  These  requirements  are  as  follows: 
(1)  Pure  podophyllin  must  be  completely  soluble  in  about  twice 
its  weight  of  cold  alcohol. 
(2)  It  should  contain  about  64  per  cent,  ether-soluble  and  about 
74  per  cent,  chloroform-soluble  matter. 
(3)  It  should  contain  about  22  per  cent,  crude  picropodophyllin 
when  assayed  by  the  method  described. 
Before  putting  such  requirements  into  the  Pharmacopoeia  it  would 
be  advisable  to  prepare  podophyllin  from  different  samples  of  man- 
drake root,  subject  the  different  podophyllins  so  obtained  to  such  an 
examination  as  here  described,  and  in  this  way  establish  a  mean 
value  for  ether  and  chloroform-soluble  part,  as  well  as  for  the 
amount  of  crude  picropodophyllin  which  should  be  contained  in 
this  very  important  drug. 
The  American  Milk-Product  Industry. 
By  Joseph  W.  England. 
The  author  in  a  lengthy  paper  referred  particularly  to  the  manu- 
facture of  milk-sugar,  casein  and  other  products  derived  from  cow's 
milk,  and  stated  that  to-day  fully  three-fourths  of  all  the  milk-sugar 
produced  in  the  world  and  probably  a  larger  proportion  of  casein  is 
made  in  the  United  States.  The  paper  is  interesting  in  that  it 
presents  a  historical  resume  of  the  subject  and  gives  the  status  of  the 
milk-product  industry  in  the  United  States  to-day. 
