DETECTION  OF  STRYCHNIA  AND  OTHER  PRINCIPLES.  527 
ON  THE  DETECTION  OF  STRYCHNIA  AND  OTHER  VEGETA- 
BLE AND  ANIMAL  PROXIMATE  PRINCIPLES. 
By  Thomas  E.  Jenkins. 
The  writer  having  been  employed  in  the  month  of  September, 
1855,  to  investigate  chemically,  a  case  of  suspected  poisoning, 
a  course  of  analysis  was  entered  into,  the  result  of  which  indi- 
cated the  presence  of  strychnia  in  the  contents  of  the  stomach. 
One  set  of  reactions  which  pointed  to  this  poison,  was  the 
coloration  produced  by  oxidizing  agents ;  these  re-agents, 
although  said  by  many  chemists  to  be  characteristic  tests  for 
strychnia,  were  not  certainly  known  to  be  so  by  me,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  I  had  not  tried  and  seen  their  effects  upon  the 
various  organic  principles  which  were  accessible  to  me.  To 
satisfy  myself  upon  this  point,  the  following  experiments  were 
made. 
It  was  not  deemed  necessary  to  use  more  than  one  of  the 
oxidising  agents  commonly  employed  for  the  purpose,  because 
the  results  produced  are  substantially  the  same  whether  the 
oxidation  be  produced  by  one  or  the  other  of  them. 
The  manner  of  making  these  experiments  was  simply  to  mix 
on  a  white  porcelain  surface  about  the  twentieth  of  a  grain  of 
the  organic  substance  with  one  or  two  drops  of  colorless  concen- 
trated sulphuric  acid,  allowing  them  to  remain  in  contact  for  a 
few  moments,  then  testing  with  a  small  fragment  of  a  crystal  of 
bichromate  of  potassa  drawn  through  the  solution  or  mixture. 
With  many  of  the  principles,  the  sulphuric  acid  reacted 
powerfully  with  the  development  of  beautiful,  and,  in  several 
instances^  intense  colors.  These  I  have  noticed,  as  well  as  those 
produced  by  the  subsequent  action  of  the  bichromate  of  potassa. 
In  these  experiments  I  have  disregarded  all  changes  except 
those  resulting  in  the  production  of  colors  or  their  mutations. 
In  point  of  time,  quantity  of  substance  tested,  and  mode  of 
operating,  the  experiments  were  all  as  nearly  alike  as  possible. 
The  proximate  principles  which  I  employed  were  pure  and 
nearly  all  in  crystals. 
The  changes  in  color  are  given  in  the  order  in  which  they 
occurred. 
