294 
POISONING BY VEGETABLES. 
contains, however, no rice flour, but only gum resin.* 
Merk observes in his chemical diagnosis of opium, that the 
opium obtained under the name of Constantinople opium 
contains the greatest proportion of sulphate of morphia. I 
have, therefore, always used acetate of baryta as a reagent 
in the examination of opium, in order qualitatively to de- 
termine the best sort; and, in fact, only the best Smyrna 
opium reacts upon it, and the Patna, Benares, English, 
Grecian, and Egyptian opium are at the utmost only clouded 
by it, but throw down no precipitate. — Pharm. Jour, from 
Buck, Neper. 
ART. LXXVII. — ON POISONING BY VEGETABLES, OR THEIR 
PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES IN GENERAL, AND BY OPIUM OR 
MORPHINE IN PARTICULAR. 
By M. Ch. Flandin. 
This memoir is divided into two parts. In the first, the au- 
thor proposes two new analytical processes, both based upon 
the two following experimental facts, — 1st, that the proxi- 
mate principles of poisonous vegetables, such as morphine, 
narcotine, brucine, strychnine, &c, are not decomposed 
* According to a superficial examination the Dikki Malei cakes 
consist of : 
95 per cent, substances insoluble in water, viz. : 
60 resin. 
35 other organic substances and sand. 
5 per cent, tannin and gum, soluble in water. 
100 
