346 ON THE PREPARATION OF PROPYLAMINE FROM ERGOTINE. 
peculiar chemical composition which I have discovered ; as pro- 
pylamine, according to my experiments, is to be found also in the 
normal urine and sweat. 
The importance of the small quantity of iodine contained in the 
oil I shall endeavor to determine by subsequent experiments ; for 
the present I shall only observe that both the oxide qfpropyle and 
the propylamine are chemically very closely related to iodine, the 
first forming with it a compound (iodide of propyle,) similar to 
iodide of formyle (iodoform,) which becomes very easily decom- 
posed. — London Pharm. Journ.. July, 1852, from Buchner's 
Neues Repertorium fur Pharmacie., Bd. I. H ft. 4, p. 165. 
PREPARATION OF PROPYLAMINE FROM ERGOTINE. 
By Dr. F. L. Winkler. 
The readers of the New Repertory for Pharmacy, part L, p. 
22, already know that I have been for some time occupied with 
the investigation of ergot, and that I obtained, by the distillation 
of ergotine with potash, besides ammonia, a substance having a 
very unpleasant odor, which conducted itself as a volatile alkali, 
and possessed a narcotic and highly diuretic property. This 
confirmation of a result which I had obtained some years before, 
induced me to continue my experiments, and I have now arrived 
at the conviction that the volatile alkali which is extracted from 
ergotine by distillation with potash is propylamine (N H 2 C 6 H 7 , 
or N H 3 C 6 H 6 ,) consequently the same which, according to the 
most recent experiments, is proved to be the product of decom- 
position of narcotine by potash, and the ingredient of herring- 
pickle. The smell itself made me imagine, long before I was ac- 
quainted with Wertheim's experiments, that herring-pickle must 
likewise contain propylamine, and my experiments have fully 
confirmed this supposition, for in distilling herring-pickle with 
potash I obtained the same propylamine as that extracted from 
a concentrated aqueous solution of ergotine. The properties in 
in which they agree are the following : — 
1. Propylamine saturates acids completely, and thus forms 
salts soluble in water, and for the most part in spirit of wine, 
