CHEMICAL HISTORY OF THE GRATIOLA. 281 
ART. LXXVIII— CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS THE CHEMICAL 
HISTORY OF THE GRATIOLA. 
By M. Eugene Marchand, of Fecamp. 
The gratiola (Gratiola officinalis, L,) hedge hyssop, is a 
plant endowed with purgative powers of the most energe- 
tic nature, and on this account it is sometimes used as a 
popular medicine, under the title of " the poor man's herb." 
Looking at it as one of the most active and most dangerous 
plants that grow in France, we ought to be astonished it 
has not, long since, attracted the attention of pharmacopo- 
lists and chemists ; for one only, the learned Vauquelin, 
published, in 1809, the result of his inquiries into its consti- 
tution ; but the means science, at that time, had placed at 
the disposal of the chemist were far from reaching the per- 
fection and precision organic analysis has attained since 
that epoch. We must not, therefore, be astonished if plants, 
analysed at the beginning of this century, exhibit to the 
chemist of our day, who analyses them anew, principles of 
which his predecessors were far from even suspecting the 
existence. Having mentioned this to justify myself for 
having ventured to undertake, afresh, the analysis of a plant 
that merited the honor of being examined by Vauquelin, 
I shall endeavour at present to demonstrate, that the ex- 
tremely bitter resino'id matter, known to exist in the gratio- 
la, and to which its properties are attributed, is not the direct 
principle, but a complex substance, a part of which only 
communicates to it its medicinal energy. 
But, before we proceed further, let us examine the list 
of the principles Vauquelin detected in this plant. These 
were an extremely bitter resinoid matter, an animal matter, 
a brown-colored gum, a vegetable acid, which Vauquelin 
believed to be either malic or acetic, and which was in com- 
bination with soda and lime, phosphates of lime and iron, 
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