5« 
U.  S.  P.  ipoo  Menstrua. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\   February,  1914. 
The  following  table  shows  the  tests  of  commercial  lots  of  F.  E. 
Digitalis,  U.  S.  P.  8th  Rev.  (a)  before  and  (b)  after  an  attempt 
to  improve  the  quality  by  concentrating  the  extract. 
Number. 
Tested. 
Per  cent.  Activity. 
I  (a) 
8/4/9 
8=? 
i  (b) 
8/19/9 
go 
2  (a) 
7/20/9 
85 
2  (b) 
8/4/9 
85 
3  (a) 
3/4/9 
60 
3  W 
4/2/9 
100 
4  (a) 
I/3I/8 
80 
4  (b) 
2/8/8 
80 
5  W 
5/23/7 
75 
5  (b) 
6/1/7 
83 
Further  data  on  20  samples  of  the  preparation  show  results  of 
first  tests  ranging  from  50  to  100  per  cent,  standard  and  averaging 
exactly  78  per  cent. 
The  standard  referred  to  is  the  average  activity  obtained  from 
12  lots  of  crude  drug,  botanically  of  first  class  quality,  selected  at 
random  and  extracted  with  62.7  per  cent,  alcohol,  the  official  men- 
struum of  the  U.  S.  P.  7th  Revision.  The  activity  was  determined 
by  the  frog  method  described  by  Houghton  3  as  a  means  of  standard- 
izing the  heart  tonics  of  the  digitalis  series.  In  that  article  attention 
was  called  to  the  enormous  variation  in  samples  of  the  crude  drug  for 
sale  on  the  open  market. 
The  value  of  such  a  method  is  also  shown  when  endeavoring 
to  extract  from  active  material  all  the  therapeutically  active  sub- 
stances and  to  establish  by  experiments  on  other  than  the  human 
subject  the  relative  activity  of  extracts  obtained  by  means  of  various 
menstrua. 
The  above  results  speak  for  themselves,  but  if  additional  authority 
is  needed  it  should  be  sufficient  to  note  that  the  menstrua  for  making 
tinctures  and  fluidextracts  of  digitalis  in  the  official  Pharmacopceise 
of  the  world,  specify,  almost  without  exception,  a  percentage  of 
alcohol  in  excess  of  that  official  in  the  U.  S.  P.  8th  Revision.  The 
menstruum  adopted  in  1906  by  the  Brussels  Conference  is  70  per  cent, 
alcohol  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  Revision  Committee  will  be 
influenced  by  this  in  adopting  an  official  menstruum  for  the  9th 
Rev.  of  the  U.  S.  P. 
II.  As  noted  before  in  the  abstract  from:  the  American  Journal 
