302 
Spurious  Cubebs. 
(Am.  Jour.  Pharna. 
1       June,  1885. 
SPURIOUS  CUBEBS. 
By  E.  M.  Holmes,  F.  L.  S., 
Curator  of  the  Museum  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society. 
My  attention  has  recently  been  directed  again  to  the  spurious  cubebs 
which  were  offered  for  sale  in  the  London  market  last  year,  by  a  para- 
graph in  the  "  Lancet "  (May  2,  p.  829),  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Buxton 
Shillitoe,  in  which  lie  states  that  a  patient  came  to  him,  who  had  been 
taking  cubeb  powder,  and  complained  that  it  made  him  feverish,  with 
sickness  and  purging.  The  patient  had  previously  taken  cubeb  pow- 
der for  a  week  without  its  disagreeing  with  iiim,  and  then  had  to  buy 
some  more.  The  new  sample  had  a  more  acrid  and  unpleasant  taste, 
and  gave  rise  to  nausea,  followed  by  diarrhoea,  etc.  He  persevered 
with  it  for  three  days,  when  he  became  so  ill  that  he  could  not  go  to 
business. 
Feeling  sure  that  either  the  si)urioiis  cubebs  (Piper  crass Ipes'^),  which 
Mr.  W.  Kirkby  kindly  examined  microscopically  at  my  request  (f'  Phar. 
Jour.,"  Feb.  14,  p.  653),  or  the  berries  of  Daphnklium  Cubeba,  which 
have  still  more  recently  been  offered  as  cubebs,  had  been  used,  either  pure 
or  mixed  with  true  cubebs,  I  wrote  to  Dr.  Shillitoe,  who  kindly  fur- 
nished me  with  a  specimen  of  the  cubebs  which  caused  the  unpleasant 
symptoms  above  descril)ed. 
The  distinctions  between  the  true  and  spurious  cubebs,  given  in  Mr. 
Kirkby 's  paper,  being  available  only  for  detecting  the  entire  fruit,  and 
not  for  the  examination  of  the  powder  if  mixed  with  that  of  true 
cubebs,  it  seemed  desirable  to  again  examine  the  drug  in  the  interests 
of  public  safety,  in  the  hope  of  finding  out  some  practical  test  that 
could  be  easily  and  quickly  applied  so  as  to  enable  chemists  who  might 
unwittingly  have  received  the  adulterated  article  to  detect  its  character. 
I  therefore  made  a  decoction  of  the  true  drug,  of  the  Piper  crassipes 
and  of  the  Daphnidium  Cabeba,  and  of  the  adulterated  cubebs  for- 
warded by  Dr.  Shillitoe,  and  applied  several  reagents,  with  the  follow- 
ing results. 
Iodine  solution  gave  a  bright  indigo-blue  coloration  with  the  gen- 
uine cubebs,  a  dull  purplish  hue  with  P.  crassipes,  no  change  of  color 
with  Daphnidium  Cubeba,  and  a  dull  purplish  blue  with  the  spurious 
cubebs,  indicating  an  admixture  of  a  little  genuine  cubebs  with  P. 
crassipes,  very  different  to  the  very  distinct  blue  tint  of  the  genuine 
drug. 
