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Contamination  of  Wild  Cherry  Bark.   |Am  jour.  Pharm. 
J  J  S       Aug.  1917. 
CONTAMINATION  OF  WILD  CHERRY  BARK  WITH 
METALLIC  IRON.1 
By  Charles  H.  La  Wall. 
A  rather  unusual  contamination  of  wild  cherry  bark  with  par- 
ticles of  metallic  iron  was  recently  observed,  which  may  be  worth 
recording  because  of  the  unsuitability  of  such  bark  for  making  the 
official  preparations  of  wild  cherry  and  because  of  the  possibility 
that  other  lots  of  the  same  kind  of  ground  bark  may  be  on  the  market 
and  that  other  pharmacists  may  have  experienced  the  trouble  de- 
scribed below  and  were  unable  to  account  for  it. 
A  lot  of  wild  cherry  bark,  ground  to  the  official  degree  of  fine- 
ness, was  purchased  by  Prof.  E.  F.  Cook,  director  of  the  operative 
pharmacy  laboratory  of  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy,  for 
use  by  the  class  in  making  syrup  of  wild  cherry.  There  was  nothing 
suspicious  or  unusual-looking  about  the  drug  and  it  was  used  by 
nearly  100  students  in  making  syrup  of  wild  cherry  by  the  U.  S.  P. 
IX  method,  which  involves  a  preliminary  maceration  of  the  ground 
drug  with  the  glycerin-water  menstruum  for  twenty-four  hours. 
The  next  day  the  drug  in  every  one  of  the  percolators  was  black  and 
the  percolate  which  came  through  upon  beginning  the  operation 
looked  more  like  ink  than  an  infusion  of  wild  cherry. 
An  investigation  of  the  drug  showed  an  ash  slightly  high  but 
not  abnormally  so,  and  in  this  connection  it  may  be  appropriate  to 
note  the  fact  that  for  some  reason  the  U.  S.  P.  requirement  for  ash, 
which  is  part  of  the  text  of  other  vegetable  drugs,  is  lacking  in  the 
case  of  wild  cherry.  The  ash  showed  indications  of  an  abnormally 
high  proportion  of  iron,  which  was  confirmed  by  comparative  colori- 
metric  tests  upon  the  sample  in  question  with  another  sample  which 
showed  no  discoloration  in  making  the  infusion,  dissolving  the  ash 
of  each  in  diluted  hydrochloric  acid,  oxidizing  with  a  drop  or  two 
of  nitric  acid  and  adding  potassium  sulphocyanate  T.  S.  The 
normal  sample  of  wild  cherry  gave  but  a  faint  pink  color  while  the 
abnormal  sample  yielded  a  deep  red  solution. 
A  10-gramme  portion  of  the  wild  cherry  was  mixed  with  100  Cc. 
of  distilled  water  in  a  large-sized  beaker  and  the  contents,  after 
1  Read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania  Pharmaceutical  Association, 
I9I7- 
