20 
Advances  in  Pharmacy. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
January,  1920. 
A  REVIEW  OF  THE  ADVANCES  IN  PHARMACY. 
By  John  K.  Thum,  Ph.M., 
the:  I.ANKENAU  HOSPITAL,  PHILADEI.PHIA. 
Thb  Activity  ov  American  Digitaus. — J.  H.  Pratt  and  H. 
Morrison,  of  Boston,  both  doctors,  had  their  attention  called  to  the 
possibility  of  using  American  digitalis  as  early  as  1910,  when  a 
tincture  made  from  leaf  grown  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  found, 
in  their  laboratory,  to  be  nearly  twice  as  strong  as  the  tincture  in 
use  at  that  time  in  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital.  This 
tincture  was  prepared  by  a  prominent  American  manufacturing 
pharmaceutical  house  in  January,  1909;  and  as  it  was  not  tested 
until  December,  19 10,  it  was  probably  two  years  old  and  had  prob- 
ably lost  some  of  its  original  potency. 
The  authors  mention  that  Duffield,  in  the  American  Journai^ 
OF  Pharmacy,  41:  55,  1869,  speaks  of  tests  that  he  had  made  of 
American-grown  digitalis,  prepared  by  the  Shakers  of  Mount  Lebanon. 
By  crude  chemical  methods  he  found  that  the  percentages  of  active 
principles  were  higher  than  in  samples  of  English  leaf,  and  these 
in  turn  higher  than  in  German  leaves  that  he  examined  at  the  same 
time.  He  said  that  our  home-grown  digitalis,  if  properly  dried  and 
gathered,  was  superior.  Unfortunately,  his  investigation  led  no 
one  to  study  and  report  the  therapeutic  value  of  the  American  digi- 
talis leaf. 
In  1911,  Dr.  Hale  published  the  result  of  some  of  his  work  which 
shows  that  first-year  leaves  from  American  leaves  from  Arlington, 
Va.,  and  those  grown  in  Madison,  Wis.,  and  Seattle,  Wash.,  were 
stronger  than  the  select  English  leaves  that  he  tested  at  the  same 
time  for  comparison.  He  also  found  that  second-year  leaves  grown 
in  Seattle  were  somewhat  weaker  than  the  English  digitalis. 
Rowntree  and  Macht  (Jour.  A.  M.  A.,  66:  870,  1916),  using  the 
cat  method  of  Hatcher  and  Brody,  made  the  discovery  that  digitalis 
from  the  drug  garden  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin  was  more 
active  than  any  of  four  lots  of  Allen's  English  leaves  tested.  Some 
of  this  same  lot  of  Wisconsin  leaf  was  tested  by  Dr.  Pratt,  a  10  per 
cent,  infusion  being  used.  The  Minimum  Lethal  Dose  of  this  in- 
fusion was  0.012  Mil.  per  gram  frog  weight.  Dr.  Pratt  states  that 
this  was  stronger  than  the  majority  of  English  and  German  leaves 
examined  in  his  laboratory.    Roth  tested  some  American-grown 
