Am.  Jour.  Phartu.  t 
October.  1903.  J 
Mydriatic  Alkaloids. 
457 
saponification  products.  Therefore,  when  atropine  and  hyoscyamine 
of  undoubted  authenticity  and  purity  were  prepared  in  the  course  of 
an  investigation  upon  the  alkaloids  of  Scopola  and  Belladonna, 
which  was  pursued  at  the  request  of  the  Committee  of  Revision  of 
the  United  States  Pharmacopoeia,  the  opportunity  for  a  scientific 
comparative  pharmacological  study  of  these  bases  was  eagerly 
embraced  and  the  necessary  material  placed  at  the  disposal  of  Dr. 
Cushny.  I  have  followed  the  progress  of  his  investigation  with 
great  interest  and  can  say  that  the  results  obtained  are  no  less 
remarkable  than  the  care,  skill  and  accuracy  bestowed  upon  the 
work.  The  study  has  extended  over  more  than  a  year's  time,  and 
the  results  which  are  very  briefly  summarized  here  will  be  given  in 
detail  in  an  original  article  which  is  now  in  press. 
I.  Upon  the  central  nervous  system  of  mammals  atropine  acts 
exactly  like  a  hyoscyamine,  both  in  the  nature  and  in  the  intensity 
of  action.  It  also  acts  like  hyoscyamine  upon  the  heart  and  the 
terminations  of  the  motor  nerves  in  the  frog. 
Assuming  that  atropine  consists  of  equal  parts  of  1-hyoscyamine 
and  the  hypothetical  d-hyoscyamine,  it  follows  from  these  results 
that  the  latter  alkaloid  will  have  the  same  action  upon  these  organs 
and  upon  these  animals  as  atropine  and  1-hyoscyamine. 
II.  Atropine  acts  more  powerfully  upon  the  reflexes  of  the  spinal 
cord  in  the  frog  than  1-hyoscyamine. 
Using  the  same  basis  of  argument,  this  indicates  that  d-hyoscy- 
amine has  a  more  powerful  action  upon  the  spinal  cord  of  the  frog 
than  its  complement  1-hyoscyamine. 
III.  L-hyoscyamine  is  twice  as  powerful  as  atropine  upon  the 
nerve  ends  of  the  salivary  glands,  heart  and  pupil  in  mammals. 
This  means  that  the  unknown  d-hyoscyamine,  when  found,  will 
show  little  or  no  action  upon  these  nerve  ends. 
The  argument  is  made  that  if  atropine  is  really  the  racemic  form 
of  ordinary  hyoscyamine,  then  a  d-form  must  exist,  and  that  the 
pharmacological  action  of  atropine  is  the  sum  total  of  the  actions  of 
its  optically  active  modifications,  since  it  is  probable  that  when 
atropine  goes  into  solution  it  does  not  exist  as  such,  but  as  a  simple 
mixture  of  d-  and  1-hyoscyamine. 
These  deductions  had  been  arrived  at  scarcely  a  fortnight  when 
the  excellent  and  highly  important  article  upon  the  conversion  of 
atropine  into  d-  and  1-hyoscyamine  by  Amenomiya  appeared.  A 
