i8o  Digitalis  Leaves.  { ^March,^?™' 
elusive  but  the  results  are  apparently  of  sufficient  importance  to  be 
published. 
From  some  previous  experiments,  unpublished,  it  has  been  ob- 
served that  the  fresh  leaves  extracted  with  95  per  cent,  alcohol  had 
a  higher  degree  of  activity  than  the  average  digitalis  on  the  market 
and  apparently  the  tincture,  so  prepared,  was  more  active  than  that 
prepared  from  a  part  of  the  same  lot  of  leaves  dried  before 
extraction. 
The  following  experiments  were,  therefore,  planned  and  carried 
out.  Fresh  leaves  were  gathered  from  the  flowering  and  fruiting 
plants  in  July,  divided  into  three  equal  amounts  and  extracted  as 
follows : 
First :  Extracted  immediately  with  95  per  cent,  alcohol  for  the 
moistening  and  then  with  70  per  cent,  alcohol  to  complete  ex- 
haustion. 
Second:  Dried  in  an  oven  at  temperatures  ranging  between  750 
and  900,  then  extracted  with  70  per  cent,  alcohol.  The  drying 
covered  a  period  of  about  5  hours. 
Third:  Dried  in  the  air  and  partly  in  the  sun  over  a  period  of 
4  days,  then  extracted  with  70  per  cent,  alcohol. 
The  tinctures  were  made  to  the  same  amount  on  the  basis  of  the 
weight  of  the  oven-dried  lot,  which  was  considerably  less  than  that 
of  the  air-dried  sample. 
Only  two  lots  of  drug  were  available,  one  being  the  official  variety 
digitalis  purpurea,  and  the  other  a  non-official  variety. 
The  results  of  essays  are  as  follows,  the  method  of  testing  being 
the  M.  L.  D.  method  originally  applied  by  Houghton.13  The  cor- 
rectness of  the  end  result  was  in  every  case  checked  by  examining 
the  heart  of  the  dead  frog  to  determine  whether  death  occurred  with 
heart  in  systole — the  characteristic  position  from  digitalis  poisoning. 
These  results  coincide  with  those  previously  obtained  in  that  the 
fresh  drug  has  greater  toxicity  than  the  dried.  The  experiments 
also  show  that  the  high  temperature  employed  in  the  oven  caused  a 
greater  immediate'  deterioration  than  the  slower  drying  at  the  season 
temperatures. 
Further  experiments  are  planned  to  demonstrate  whether  the 
oven-dried  drug  is  more  stable  than  the  air-dried  sample  but  this 
point  could  not  be  considered,  as  not  sufficient  leaves  were  available 
13  Houghton,  /.  Am.  Med.  Assoc.,  31,  959,  1898. 
