564  Mydriatic  Action  of  the  Solanacece.  {AmNov.?Sarm* 
of  all  men  that  went  from  Liibeck  to  the  war  in  Russia  but  few 
returned.  His  temporary  blindness  lasted  thirty-six  hours,  passed 
away  painlessly,  without  leaving  behind  any  deleterious  results." 
Thus  far  goes  the  report  of  Runge,  from  which  we  can  distinctly 
see  that  he  obtained  the  knowledge  of  the  mydriatic  action  of  the  Sol- 
anacese  by  the  same  accident  as  Daries  derived  his  knowledge.  Runge 
is  consequently  the  seventh  discoverer  of  this  action.  He  tried  even 
to  practically  utilize  his  discovery  at  once  ;  for  he  recommended  in 
his  dissertation  (<De  Novo  Methodo  Veneficiuni  Dijudicandi/  Jense, 
1819)  in  a  case  of  suspected  atropine  intoxication  to  place  a  drop  of  the 
urine  of  the  poisoned  person  into  the  eye  of  a  cat.  The  word  atro- 
pine does  not  seem  to  have  been  known  to  Runge,  for  the  solanacese 
alkaloid,  isolated  approximately  by  him,  he  calls  koromegyn  (Greek, 
magnifier  of  pupil).  This  alkaloid  was  isolated  in  1830  properly  by 
the  apothecary  Mein,1  of  Neustadt-Goders,  and  independently  of  him 
in  1832  by  Geiger  and  Hesse,2  while  Liebig,3  determined  its  chemical 
formula.  The  solution  of  the  pure  sulphate  of  atropine,  instead  of 
the  extract  of  belladonna,  was  at  once  used  by  Geiger4  and  Hesse  for 
the  purpose  of  dilating  the  pupil.  The  named  chemists  succeeded 
soon5  after  also  in  isolating  hyoscy amine,  the  active  principle  of  hy- 
oscyamus.  They  showed  that  this  alkaloid,  like  atropine,  had  a  dis- 
tinctly mydriatic  action  even  in  a  dilution  of  1  to  1000. 
In  the  majority  of  books  treating  of  these  historical  facts,  such  as 
in  Hirsch's  '  History  of  Ophthalmology/  and  in  Hirsch's  '  Latest  Dis- 
coveries of  Materia  Medica/  Heidelberg  and  Leipzig,  1843,  vol.  ii., 
p.  160,  we  find  the  statement  that  the  complete  isolation  of  atropine 
and  hyoscyamine  occurred  in  the  first  half  of  the  second  decade  of  this 
century,  and  was  obtained  by  Brandes  and  Runge.  This,  however,  is 
wholly  untrue.6  For  all  those  cases  referred  only  to  purified  extracts, 
but  not  to  chemically  pure  alkaloids.    After  the  mydriatic  action  of 
1  '  Liebig's  Annalen,'  vol.  vi.,  p.  67. 
2  Ibid.,  vol.  v.,  p.  38. 
3  ibid.,  vol.  vi.,  1833,  p.  66. 
4  Ibid.,  p.  68. 
5  Ibid.,  vol.  vii.,  1833,  p.  271. 
6  Equally  erroneous  is  the  statement  that  Keisinger  ('Bayerische  Annalen;'" 
Abhandlungen  aus  dem  Gebiete  der  Chirurgie,  Sulzbach,  1827;  also  Salzburger 
Med.  Chir.  Zeitung,  1825,  No.  14,  p.  237,  and  No.  15,  p.  253)  in  1824  had  used  the 
pure  alkaloids  of  Solanacese. 
