ON  TOBACCO. 
209 
actly  the  office  of  the  various  parts  of  plants,  and,  lastly,  may 
throw  light  on  the  changes  which  go  on  at  different  periods  of 
the  life  of  a  plant. — London  Pharm.  Journal. 
ON  TOBAXJCO. 
By  Ferdinand  F.  Mayer,  of  New  York. 
Query  11th. — Is  nicotina  the  active  principle  in  carefully  dried  green 
tobacco  leaves  ?  Do  the  seeds  of  tobaeco  contain  the  same  alkaloid  ? 
and  if  so,  does  the  proportion  of  nicotina  in  commercial  tobacco  justify  the 
belief  of  Liebig  [Agricultural  Chemistry,  Amer.  ed.,  p.  184,)  that  it  is  an 
artificial  product  ? 
Numerous  as  have  been  the  essays  published  both  on  the  chem- 
ical and  the  therapeutical  relations  of  Nicotiana  Tabacum  and 
its  narcotic  principle,  they  refer  for  the  greater  part  to  the  leaf 
of  the  usual  brown  color  and  well-known  irritating  ammonia- 
cal  odor,  which  is  the  form  officinal  in  all  Pharmacopoeias  ;  for, 
though  universally  cultivated,  the  plant  is  never  prepared  spe- 
cially for  application  in  medicine  like  other  narcotics,  partly 
because  of  the  commercial  article  being  still  more  readily  ob- 
tainable, but,  in  yet  greater  measure,  because  the  fresh  and  the 
dried  green  leaves  have  very  generally  been  considered,  if  not 
devoid,  to  be  at  least  of  very  feeble  developed  medicinal  vir- 
tues. Only  those  of  another  species,  N.  rustica,  are  occasionally 
used  fresh  as  an  external  application,  and  are,  or  were  formerly, 
officinal  in  some  European  Pharmacopoeias. 
There  is  so  striking  a  difference  in  many  of  the  outer  prop- 
erties of  the  officinal  plant,  in  the  green  and  the  cured  condition, 
as  to  offer  in  itself  some  grounds,  for  what  was  formerly  uni- 
versally and  is  even  now  very  generally  believed,  that  the  vo- 
latile alkaloid  on  which  the  activity  of  brown  tobacco  is  sup- 
posed to  depend  was  not  present  as  such  in  the  living  plant, 
but  that  it  is  a  posthumous  product  formed  entirely  or  partly 
during  that  incomplete  fermentation  which  it  undergoes  in  the 
hands  of  the  cultivator,  the  "bulking"  of  tobacco.  For,  the 
fresh  plant  possesses  none  of  the  peculiar  heavy  odor  of  the 
other  narcotics.  Nor  is  the  dried  leaf  much  more  pungent  than 
a  common  herb.  Its  infusion,  like  the  fresh  juice,  has  an  acid 
reaction,  and  contains  no  ammonia.    Its  color  is  pale  green, 
14 
