Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  > 
Mar.,  1878.  / 
Veratrum  Alkaloids. 
123 
sixteenth  century,  the  rhizome  being  called  de  balestera  or  de  jerva,  and 
it  is  possible  that  the  charbak  abjadh  of  the  Arabian  physicians  was  the 
same  drug.  Since  veratrum  is  not  indigenous  to  Greece,  the  helleboros 
of  the  ancient  Greeks  was  most  likely  not  identical  with  the  former. 
Pelletier  and  Caventou  examined  Ver.  album  in  18 19,  and  announced 
the  presence  of  veratria.  In  1837,  Edward  Simon  corroborated  the 
presence  of  veratria,  and  found  another  alkaloid  which  he  called  barytin 
(from  its  behavior  to  sulphuric  acid),  changing  the  name  afterwards  to 
jervia.  H.  Will  ("Ann.  der  Phar."  xxv.)  examined  jervia,  and  from  his 
elementary  analysis  gave  it  the  formula  C60H45N2O5,  which  was  changed 
by  Limpricht  ("  Grundriss  d.  Org.  Chem.,"  1862)  to  C60H46N2O6. 
In  1842  A.  Weigand  confirmed  the  presence  of  veratria  and  jervia  in 
Ver.  album.  The  same  results  were  arrived  at  by  Herm.  Weppen,  in 
1872,  and  in  the  same  year  Schroff,  Jr.,  announced  the  presence  of  vera- 
tria in  Ver.  Lobelianum,  while  Dragendorff,  in  1871,  found  the  second 
alkaloid  (beside  jervia)  to  differ  from  veratria,  and  subsequently  an- 
nounced the  presence  of  jervia  also  in  Ver.  nigrum.1 
The  author  first  examined  the  rhizomes  of  Ver.  Lobelianum,  partly 
collected  from  wild  plants  in  Austria,  partly  from  cultivated  ones  in 
Russia,  in  both  of  which  Dragendorff  had  already  found  notable  quanti- 
ties of  veratroidia.    The  process  adopted  was  as  follows  : 
Two  kilos  of  the  coarsely  powdered  rhizome  were  mixed  to  a  soft 
mass  with  sufficient  water  containing  36*8  grm.  phosphoric  acid,  sp  gr» 
1*23,  macerated  for  24  hours,  mixed  with  7-5  kilos  alcohol  of  95  per 
cent.,  the  mixture  digested  in  a  water  bath  for  8  hours,  cooled  and  ex- 
pressed ;  and  the  press  cake  similarly  treated  with  12  kilos  alcohol  of 
70  per  cent,  and  15  grams  phosphoric  acid.  The  united  liquids  were 
filtered,  the  alcohol  distilled  off  in  vacuo,  the  residue  concentrated  to 
a  syrupy  consistence,  mixed  with  3  times  its  weight  of  water,  the  resin 
filtered  off  after  several  hours  and  the  filtrate  rendered  alkaline  by 
sodium  carbonate.  The  precipitate  was  separated  from  inorganic  salts 
by  solution  in  alcohol,  the  filtrate  diluted  with  an  equal  part  of  water, 
digested  with  recently  ignited  animal  charcoal,  and  the  faintly  wine- 
yellow  filtrate  evaporated,  when  a  yellowish  crystalline  mass,  A,  was 
1  The  literature  on  the  investigation  of  Ver.  viride  is  given  in  full.  We  omit  it 
here,  since  our  readers  are  familiar  with  it  from  the  papers  of  Ch.  L.  Mitchell 
("  Proc.  Am.  Phar.  Assoc.,"  1874),  Chas  Bullock  ("Amer.  Jour.  Phar.,"  1875,  P- 
449)  and  Prof.  Wormley  ("Ibid.,"  1876,  p.  1). 
