THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
JULY,  i895. 
A  REVIEW  OF  THE  CONSTITUENTS  OF  WHITE  AND 
BLACK  MUSTARD  SEED._ 
By  L.  B.  Sayrk. 
If  one  will  take  the  trouble  to  review  the  chemical  constituents 
of  white  and  black  mustard,  he  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  by  the 
fact  that  we  have  in  these  two  plants  of  the  Cruciferae  a  most  inter- 
esting chemical  study.  Just  why  these  two  plants  of  the  same 
order,  of  the  same  genus,  indigenous  to  almost  the  same  countries, 
growing  in  similar  soil,  and  in  the  same  climate — why  these  two 
plants,  with  so  many  conditions  and  circumstances  in  common, 
should  elaborate  different  chemical  substances  in  fructification,  and 
then  arrange  them  in  ways  so  similar,  and  what  the  significance  of 
this  peculiar  fact  is,  are  questions  which  are  beyond  our  under- 
standing. It  is  my  purpose  in  this  review  to  compare  the  chemical 
constituents  of  the  two  seeds,  and  to  bring  out,  if  possible,  any 
other  points  of  interest  that  may  be  obtained  from  a  review  of  the 
work  that  has  been  done  by  others. 
Not  many  months  ago  I  had  occasion  to  write,  for  publication,  an 
article  which  had  to  do  with  the  subject  of  mustards.  From  an 
oversight  on  my  part,  I  failed  to  draw  a  distinction  between  the 
chemical  constitution  of  the  two  seeds,  and  when  my  attention  was 
called  to  the  mistake  by  a  friend,  1  tried  to  ascertain  how  it  was 
that  the  error  had  crept  into  the  manuscript.  This  gave  me  an 
incentive  to  look  further  into  the  subject,  and  to  study  some  of  the 
original  articles  by  such  investigators  as  Will  and  Laubenheimer. 
For  the  compilation  of  the  work  done  by  these  chemists,  as  pub- 
lished in  Liebig's  Annalen,  I  am  indebted  to  Prof.  J.  U.  Lloyd,  who 
has  this  valuable  work  in  his  library.    And  for  the  laboratory  work 
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