THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
SEPTEMBER,  iSgo. 
ON  JALAP. 
By  J.  Paul  Suess,  Ph.G. 
The  literature  of  jalap,  of  late  years,  has  been  tending  towards 
the  fact  that  the  drug  is  deteriorating  in  the  richness  of  its  active 
constituent,  resin.  The  writer's  attention  was  forcibly  called  to 
this  fact  by  a  reprint,  in  the  Pharmaceutical  Record,  of  an  article 
on  "  Compound  Cathartic  Pills,  U.  S.  P.,"  by  Prof.  W.  M.  Searby, 
in  which  he  proposes  a  formula  for  the  pills  in  which  resin  of  jalap 
is  substituted  for  abstract.  He  says  :  "  The  substitution  of 
resin  of  jalap,  which  I  have  used  in  the  place  of  the  abstract,  is 
open  to  criticism.  It  is  well  known  that  the  jalap  which  has  come 
to  market  of  late  years  has  not  contained  nearly  so  much  resin  as 
we  were  accustomed  to  find  in  the  drug  15  or  20  years  ago.  At 
the  present  time,  the  jalap  of  the  market  will  not  yield  on  the 
average  more  than  about  9  per  cent,  of  resin." 
When  we  take  into  consideration  the  continued  use  of  the  drug, 
both  in  pills  and  powder,  and  the  part  it  may  be  called  upon  to 
play  in  the  treatment  of  disease,  as  employed  especially  by  older 
practitioners,  and  the  fact  that  the  amount  of  resin  contained  in  the 
drug,  as  variously  stated  in  the  books,  is  from  "  not  less  than  12" 
to  22  per  cent.,  the  assertion  of  Prof.  Searby  at  once  becomes  of 
considerable  moment  to  both  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical 
professions,  especially  at  a  time  when  our  Pharmacopoeia  is  under- 
going revision.  , 
With  these  facts  in  view,  the  writer  obtained  selected  samples  of  the 
root  from  several  reliable  drug  houses  throughout  the  United  States 
433 
