124 
ON  COMMERCIAL  BELLADONNA  LEAVES. 
not  exclusively,  from  England  and  Germany.  The  former,  as 
we  learn  from  discussions  before  the  London  Pharmaceutical 
Society,  in  consequence  of  a  paper  by  P.  Squire,  "  On  Medicinal 
Extracts,"  (Pharm.  Jour,  and  Trans,  iii.  300—308,)  are  perhaps 
solely  derived  from  plants  cultivated  for  this  purpose  and  for 
the  manufacture  of  the  extract.  True  English  belladonna  I 
have  always  seen  imported  in  wide-mouth  bottles,  holding  one 
pound  or  more.  They  are  generally  of  a  lively  green  color,  in- 
termixed with  none  or  but  few  leaves  having  a  brownish  tinge  ; 
frequently  they  are  broken,  but  occasionally  I  have  observed 
the  great  bulk  of  the  leaves  entire  and  but  little  broken.  The 
appearance  of  the  leaves  indicates  that  they  have  been  very 
rapidly  dried,  most  likely  by  artificial  heat,  because  only  by 
rapidly  conducting  this  process  can  the  color  of  the  leaves  be 
preserved  of  a  pure  green,  while  by  prolonging  it  the  upper  sur- 
face will  invariably  assume  a  brownish  green  or  even  a  greenish 
brown  shade.  This  change  of  color  alone  does  not  impair  the 
medicinal  virtues,  unless  the  leaves  have,  while  drying,  through 
gross  carelessness,  been  heated  spontaneously  to  such  a  degree  as 
to  darken  the  upper  surface  to  a  dull  brown,  devoid  of  any  tinge 
of  green,  and  to  change  the  greyish  green  of  the  lower  surface 
to  a  lighter  or  deeper  brown.  As  far  as  the  color  is  concerned, 
then,  the  leaves  ought  not  to  be  deeper  colored  than  merely 
brownish  green  above  and  greyish  green  beneath. 
In  Germany,  where  I  believe  belladonna  is  not  cultivated,  but 
gathered  from  the  wild  growing  indigenous  plants,  it  would  be 
almost  impossible  to  dry  them,  as  in  England,  by  artificial 
heat,  and  it  can  for  this  reason  be  scarcely  expected  to  obtain 
German  belladonna  in  large  quantities  of  the  pleasant  color  of 
the  English  leaves.  Indeed,  German  belladonna,  as  it  comes 
to  the  American  market,  bears  by  its  physical  properties  evi- 
dence of  having  been  dried  without  the  application  of  artificial 
heat ;  it  is  usually  imported  in  bales  of  various  weight. 
I  have  frequently  heard  that  German  herbs  and  extracts,  as  a 
general  rule,  bear  no  good  reputation  in  the  United  States,  and 
German  narcotic  extracts  which  I  have  occasionally  observed, 
were  certainly  much  below  even  very  moderate  requirements. 
Whoever  has  looked  into  the  apothecary  stores  in  Germany, 
and  into  the  German  stores,  the  smallest  ones  perhaps  excepted, 
