THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
NOVEMBER,  i8gg. 
%r  off 
A  NOTE  ON  POWDERED  DRUGS. 
By  Mki^vin  WmiAM  Bamford,  P.D. 
In  a  paper  published  in  the  Pharm,  Zeit.,  1898,  p.  685,  Dieterich  has 
shown  that  the  amount  of  ash  yielded  by  the  fine  and  coarse  parts 
of  the  powder  of  certain  drugs  varies  with  the  fineness  of  the  pow- 
der. As  to  what  these  different  powders  consisted  of,  no  mention 
whatever  was  made,  so  that  we  do  not  know  whether  they  consisted 
solely  or  in  part  of  parenchyma,  epidermis,  or  any  other  tissues,  or 
indeed  foreign  matter,  as  no  microscopical  examination  of  the  dif- 
ferent powders  was  made. 
Although  Dieterich  did,  in  drawing  his  conclusions,  state  that  he 
presumed  this  difference  in  ash  was  caused  by  the  separation  of 
tissues,  and,  therefore,  the  separation  of  their  constituents,  as  crys- 
tals, alkaloids,  etc.,  into  the  separate  powders,  this  statement  was 
made  without  any  attempt  being  made  to  prove  such  to  be  the  case. 
His  experiments,  therefore,  simply  proved  this  difference  in  ash, 
without  assigning  any  definite  cause  for  it.  Dieterich  did  not  show 
that  fine  and  coarse  powders  of  the  same  drug  did  not  yield  the 
same  percentage  of  ash,  although  this  might  have  been  assumed 
from  the  results  shown. 
In  order  to  be  clear  on  these  various  points,  and  to  determine, 
if  possible,  the  causes  underlying  them,  the  author  of  the  present 
paper,  at  the  suggestion  of  Professor  Henry  Kraemer,  carried  out  a 
number  of  experiments  in  the  Microscopical  Laboratory  of  the 
Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy.  In  the  first  of  these  experiments 
senna  was  the  drug  used. 
Senna  leaves  were  cut  up  so  as  to  all  go  through  a  No.  8  sieve, 
(511) 
