Am.  Jour.  Pliarni.') 
August,  1911.  / 
Digitalis  Hairs. 
365 
VARIATIONS  IN  THE  FORMS  OF  DIGITALIS  HAIRS.^ 
By  Henry  Kraemer. 
While  considerable  attention  has  been  given  in  a  general  way  to 
the  pharmacognosy  of  digitalis,  these  studies  have  for  the  most  part 
aimed  to  differentiate  digitalis  from  other  leaf  drugs  which  may 
have  been  occasionally  substituted  for  the  genuine  drug.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  adulteration  of  this  drug  or  its  substitution  is 
very  rare  indeed.  When  we  consider  that  digitalis  has  been  used 
in  medicine  for  some  400  years  and  see  the  conflicting  statements 
that  are  still  made  regarding  the  efficiency  and  deterioration  of  the 
drug  and  its  preparations,  we  may  well  ask  how  much  progress 
has  been  made  in  the  solution  of  the  problems  which  this  drug 
with  its  complex  constituents  presents.  It  is  true  that  we  have 
methods  for  the  biological  standardization  of  the  drug  and  its 
preparations  but  these  do  not  enable  us  tO'  determine  in  advance 
which  lot  of  drug  will,  in  a  given  instance,  be  found  valuable  and 
which  will  be  of  inferior  quality.  It  is  not  toO'  much  to  claim  that 
no  work  on  such  an  important  drug  as  this  will  be  complete 
until  we  can  determine  either  by  chemical  analysis  or  through  phar- 
macognostical  studies  the  dift'erences  between  different  samples 
of  drug.  One  thing  that  is  needed,  then,  owing  to  the  complexity 
of  the  chemical  constituents,  is  more  or  less  extended  work  in  con- 
junction with  pharmacological  tests  having  in  view  a  closer  dif- 
ferentiation of  the  physical  and  mdcroscopical  characters  of  the 
specimens  examined.  It  is  true  that  we  have  in  the  various  phar- 
macopoeias such  statements  as,  that  the  leaves  only  of  the  second- 
year  plant  shall  be  used,  and  at  the  present  time  there  is  a  ten- 
dency to  require  that  the  leaves  shall  be  thoroughly  dried  and  kept 
in  containers  with  freshly  burnt  lime.  But  we  find  that  recent 
investigations  tend  to  show  that  the  leaves  of  the  second-year 
plant  are  relatively  but  slightly  more  potent.  And  again,  we  know 
that  certain  practitioners  use  only  the  tincture  of  the  fresh  drug. 
Furthermore,  there  is  a  tendency  in  many  quarters  in  spite  of  the 
restrictions  in  many  pharmacopoeias  that  the  leaves  only  of  wild 
plants  shall  be  used,  to  employ  the  leaves  of  cultivated  plants,  and 
^  Presented  at  a  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania  Pharmaceutical  Association, 
June,  1911. 
