478  Cat  Method  for  Testing  Digitalis,  Etc.  { "^"octobe;  ^m"" 
This  is  apparently  the  view  taken  by  the  revisers  of  the  German 
Pharmacopoeia  as  that  authority  now  requires  that  the  official  tests 
are  to  be  applied  to  the  air-dried  substances  unless  otherwise 
directed. 
From  the  available  evidence  it  would  appear  that  the  determina- 
tion of  the  ash  content  of  official  drugs  is  practicable  and  important 
in  connection  with  non-structural  drugs,  like  gums  and  resins, 
pollen  grains,  seeds,  spices  and  powdered  drugs  generally. 
It  is  not  generally  applicable  to  leaf  drugs,  barks  or  roots  in  the 
uncomminuted  form  because  of  the  difficulty  of  sampling. 
To  insure  correlating  results  the  method  to  be  employed  must  be 
described,  and,  other  things  being  equal,  this  method  should  be  one 
that  can  be  easily  followed  by  retail  druggists  ordinarily  well 
equipped  for  work  of  this  kind. 
EXPERIMENTS  WITH  THE  CAT  METHOD  FOR  TESTING 
DIGITALIS  AND  ITS  ALLIES. 
By  C.  R.  Eckler. 
There  are  at  present  four  American  methods  in  use  for  the 
physiological  testing  of  the  digitalis  series,  namely :  The  twelve- 
hour  frog  method,  proposed  by  Houghton ;  the  one-hour  frog  heart 
miCthod,  proposed  by  Famulener  and  Lyons ;  the  guinea  pig  method, 
proposed  by  Reed  and  Vanderkleed ;  and  the  cat  method,  proposed 
by  Hatcher  and  Brody. 
In  view  of  the  large  amount  of  work  which  is  being  carried  out 
just  now  with  these  methods,  with  the  hope  that  some  one  may  be 
found  sufficiently  accurate  and  convenient  to  justify  its  insertion 
into  the  next  Pharmacopoeia,  it  seemed  proper  to  report  some  results 
obtained  with  one  of  these — the  cat  method  of  Hatcher  and  Brody. 
They  describe  their  method  in  the  American  Journal  of  Phar- 
macy for  August,  1910,  and  state  that  it  is  an  accurate  one,  and  one 
that  can  be  conveniently  carried  out  by  the  retail  pharmacist.  The 
purpose  of  this  study  was  tO'  ascertain  with  what  ease  the  method 
could  be  used,  and  what  uniformity  of  results  could  be  obtained. 
Since  they  have  not  given  all  the  details  of  manipulation,  I  will 
describe- the  method  as  I  used  it,  my  endeavor  being  to  carry  it  out 
in  all  respects  just  as  they  did. 
