PHARMACOLOGICAL HISTORY OF QUASSIA. 41 
contains no nitre. These were thus allowed to remain 
during a whole year, at the expiration of which the three 
were examined. 
Specimen A, a little dried, had lost twenty-seven grains in 
weight. Treated three times consecutively, for half an hour, 
with boiling alcohol at 36°, it furnished eight grains of nitrate 
of potassa. 
Specimen B,very soft,had acquired one drachm and eighteen 
grains; it was heated in a salt water bath, to bring it as far as 
practicable to its first consistence, when it was treated as the 
preceding. It afforded ten and a half grains of nitrate of po- 
tassa. 
Specimen C, of extract of gentian, had acquired thirty-eight 
grains. Submitted to the same treatment as the two others, 
not an atom of nitre could be obtained. 
Thus, in the extract B, which had been exposed to a hu- 
mid atmosphere, the increase in the proportion of nitrate had 
been two and a half grains in the space of a year; whilst in 
extract C, which had been placed in the same circumstances, 
and in which azoted matter does not exist, no nitre was 
formed. It is difficult, it appears to me, from these results, 
not to attribute the nitre of new production in the extract of 
quassia to the azoted matter which it contains. 
Jonrn. de Chim. Med. 
VOL. IV. — NO. I. 
6 
