182 
ON AMORPHOUS QUININE. 
being rinsed with water, and exposed to a gentle heat, ag- 
glutinates into a coherent mass, exhibiting the appearance 
of resin. 
From the experiments of Sertuerner, Thiele, Bucholz, 
junior, Koch, and other chemists, it has been long known 
that this resinous substance possesses the properties of a 
base, that it neutralizes acids perfectly ; but the salts which 
are formed by these combinations with acids, have baffled 
all attempts at crystallization. 
Sertuerner, who was the first chemist to separate this 
resinous substance from the mother-liquor of sulphate of 
quinine, considered it to be a distinct and peculiar organic 
base, existing in yellow and red cinchona barks, associated 
with quinine and cinchonine. He assigned to this, as he 
supposed, new substance, the name quinoidine, and greatly 
extolled its medicinal efficacy, in which he declared it was 
in all respects equal to quinine. In his journal ( Tiber die 
neuester Furlschribte in der Chemie, Physik und Heil- 
kwide, Bd. hi., No. 2, page 269,) he terms it "a true fever- 
destroyer." 
Subsequently, this substance, under the term quinoidine, 
has been employed medicinally in many places, and even 
introduced into the lists of commercial articles or price cur- 
rents of many of the druggists of Germany. 
In certain mother-liquors of quinine left in the prepara- 
tion of the sulphate, which were analysed by Henry and 
Delondre, and also a sample of quinoidine examined by 
Geiger, these able chemists discovered an amount of quinine 
and cinchonine, accompanied by a resinous substance 
which they considered impeded the crystallization of the 
sulphates of the two bases, and which in their experiments 
they failed to separate. The results obtained by these 
chemists, and the inferences obviously deducible from these 
results, rendered it indubitable that the medicinal efficacy 
of quinoidine must vary according to the greater or less pro- 
portion of quinine it may happen to contain. Now, there 
