THE 
AMERICAN  JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
MARCH,    1  867. 
ON  COLCHICIA. 
By  John  M.  Maisch. 
Some  years  ago  the  active  principle  of  colchicum  was  repeat- 
edly made  the  subject  of  investigation  with  results  frequently 
differing  in  the  most  essential  particulars.  Very  few  of  these 
papers  have  found  their  way  into  American  Journals,  and  it  may 
therefore  not  be  without  interest  to  review  the  chemical  examina- 
v  tions  of  this  interesting  substance  which  have  been  published 
within  the  last  ten  or  twelve  years. 
Since  Geiger  and  Hesse  prepared  what  they  stated  to  be  an 
alkaloid,  now  more  than  thirty  years  ago  (1833,)  this  compound 
had  excited  very  little  interest  until  this  was  awakened  again  in 
consequence  of  four  fatal  cases  of  poisoning  in  Berlin,  by  wine  of 
colchicum  seed,  the  forensic  analyses  by  Schacht  and  Wittstock 
being  widely  circulated,  and  a  condensed  account  was  published 
in  this  Journal,  1855,  page  539.  Dr.  J.  Miiller,  apothecary  of 
Berlin,  accused  in  the  above  case  of  unlawful  sale  of  poison,  was 
found  "not  guilty,"  because  Tinct.  Colchici  Sem.  was  not  enu- 
merated in  the  Prussian  Pharmacopoeia,  (6  edition,)  among  the 
poisons  ;  he  published  a  long  paper  in  Buchner's  Neues  Reper- 
torium,  1855,  page  246 — 268,  wherein  he  attempts  to  confute 
the  results  of  Schacht  and  Wittstock,  and  wherein  he  states, 
"that  not  only  the  alkaloids  and  active  principles  strychnia, 
hyoscyamia,  daturia,  emetia,  atropia,  solania,  veratria,  sabadillia, 
aconitia,  delphinia,  picrotoxin,  brucia,  cusparin,  theina,  scillitin, 
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