Am.  Jour.  Pharm.l 
October,  1903.  J 
Mydriatic  Alkaloids. 
459 
predictions  regarding  its  physiological  action,  and  accordingly  made 
a  request  for  some  of  the  new  base.  Through  the  kindness  of  Prof. 
Gadamer,  under  whose  direction  this  admirable  piece  of  work  was 
conducted,  0-050  gm.  were  placed  at  his  disposal.  No  experiments 
could  be  made  upon  the  central  nervous  system  of  mammals  or  upon 
the  heart  and  terminations  of  motor  nerves  of  the  frog  because  of 
the  small  amount  of  material.  In  all  the  tests  which  he  made 
his  expectations  were  fully  realized,  since  he  found:  First,  that 
d-hyoscyamine,  as  predicted,  has  a  much  more  powerful  action  upon 
the  spinal  cord  of  the  frog  than  1-hyoscyamine ;  and,  second,  that  it 
is  only  one-fifteenth  to  one-sixteenth  as  powerful  as  1-hyoscyamine 
upon  the  nerve  terminations  in  the  salivary  glands,  heart  and  pupil 
of  mammals,  or  nearly  inert. 
These  positive  results  have  suggested  several  interesting  ques- 
tions. One  of  these  has  reference  to  the  existence  of  these  products 
in  the  living  plant.  It  has  been  held  by  Will  and  others  that 
1-hyoscyamine  is  the  parent  of  atropine.  If  the  hypothesis  that 
atropine  when  brought  into  solution  exists,  not  as  such,  but  as  a 
mixture  of  its  optically  active  modifications,  then  there  is  a  possi- 
bility that  d-hyoscyamine  is  associated  with  1-hyoscyamine  in  the 
plant  juices  and  that  the  racemic  form  atropine  is  not  formed  until 
the  drug  is  dried. 
Do  not  these  researches  shed  light  upon  the  discrepancy  noted  in 
recent  reports  upon  the  action  of  hyoscyamine,  in  which  it  was 
claimed  that  C.  P.  hyoscyamine  Merck  was  found  to  be  physiolog- 
ically inert?  There  is  a  possibility  that  these  investigators  were 
working  with  either  d-hyoscyamine  or  perhaps  with  the  saponifica- 
tion product  of  atropine  or  hyoscyamine,  viz.  tropine. 
The  full  report  of  Dr.  Cushny  shows  that  the  action  of  atropine 
and  1-hyoscyamine  is  in  the  same  direction  but  with  different  inten- 
sity upon  certain  organs.  Therefore,  could  not  these  alkaloids  be 
used  one  for  the  other,  it  being  only  a  matter  of  dosage  which  is 
always  regulated  by  the  physician  ? 
