THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
JULY,  1903. 
ON  EPINEPHRIN  AND  ITS   COMPOUNDS,  WITH  ESPE- 
CIAL REFERENCE  TO  EPINEPHRIN  HYDRATE.1 
(An  investigation  now  being  carried  on  under  a  grant  from  the  Carnegie  Insti- 
tution.) 
By  John  J.  Abei,,  M.D., 
Professor  of  Pharmacology,  Johns  Hopkins  University. 
The  first  important  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  the  chemi- 
cal composition  of  the  suprarenal  gland  or  capsule  was  furnished  by 
Vulpian,2  who,  in  1856,  observed  that  the  fluid  expressed  from  the 
interior  part  of  the  capsules  of  many  different  animals  behaves  in  a 
striking  manner  toward  ferric  chloride  and  also  toward  solutions  of 
iodine  and  other  oxidizing  agents,  and  that  with  no  other  fluid  of 
the  body  can  similar  reactions  be  obtained. 
This  juice  of  the  medullary  substance,  which  darkens  on  exposure 
to  the  air,  is  the  atra  bilis  of  the  older  anatomists.  Vulpian  found 
that  it  gave  a  fine  green  color  with  salts  of  iron,  a  pink  or  rose-red 
with  iodine,  water  and  ammonia,  but  he  and  the  men  of  his  time 
were  unable  to  isolate  the  substance.  The  immediate  cause  of  the 
renewed  interest  of  chemists  in  this  field  was  the  discovery  of 
Schafer  and  Oliver3  and  of  Cybulski  and  Szymonowicz4  in  1894  and 
1  The  material  used  in  this  paper  is  drawn  from  two  articles  now  in  press.  One 
of  these  articles  is  to  be  found  in  the  "Contributions  to  Medical  Research," 
dedicated  to  V.  C.  Vaughan,  the  other  in  the  Berichte  d.  deutsch.  chem.  Gesell- 
schaft,  Berlin.  In  the  first-named  article  I  have  discussed  the  question  as  to 
how  far  epinephrin  fulfills  the  requirements  of  a  specific  product  of  internal 
secretion,  and  have  also  reviewed  the  evidence  which  proves  that  the  supra- 
renal capsules  are  functional  structures  and  essential  to  the  continuance  of  life. 
2  Compt.  rendus,  Acad.  d.  Sc.,  Paris,  Vol.  93,  pp.  663-665. 
*Jour.  of  Physiology,  Vol.  16  (1894),  Vol.  r8  (1895). 
4  Archiv  f.  die gesammte  Physiol.,  Vol.  64,  p.  r49. 
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