Am.  jour.  Pharm.  I   Constituents  of  Hyenanche  Globosa.  35 
January,  1921.    J  *  J 
now  enter  other  fields  which  return  greater  rewards  than  does 
pharmacy.  What  a  raising  in  standard  would  follow  the  influx  of 
a  proper  proportion  of  the  best  of  the  intellectual  youth  in.  the 
country!    Is  it  not  well  worth  attracting? 
All  that  need  be  done  to  start  is  this :  let  one  of  our  prominent 
colleges  of  pharmacy  announce  that  it  will  confer  the  Ph.D. 
(Pharm.)  degree  upon  properly  qualified  candidates  who  comply 
with  certain  stated  requirements.  If  necessary,  the  college  may 
obtain  from  the  State  the  right  to  confer  the  degree.  At  first  the 
number  of  candidates  will  probably  not  be  great  but,  as  time  goes 
on  and  when  men  observe  that  the  holders  of  the  degree  are  pre- 
ferred for  the  better  sort  of  pharmaceutical  positions,  the  number 
of  candidates  will  increase  until  the  degree  will  come  to  be  accepted 
as  a  prerequisite  for  a  scientific  or  technical  career  in  pharmacy. 
HYENANCHIN  AND  OTHER  CONSTITUENTS  OF 
HYENANCHE  GLOBOSA. 
A  paper  on  this  subject  was  read  by  Dr.  T.  A.  Henry,  Di- 
rector of  the  Wellcome  Chemical  Research  Laboratories,  at  the 
meeting  of  the  Chemical  Society  of  London  on  December  2.  This 
plant  belongs  to  the  natural  order  Euphorbiaceae  and  occurs  in 
South  Africa,  where  it  is  used  for  poisoning  wild  animals,  espe- 
cially hyenas,  a  use  reflected  in  the  generic  name  Hyenanche,  and 
also  in  the  common  name  of  the  plant,  hyena-poison.  It  was 
examined  in  1858  by  Henkel  and  in  1892  by  Engelhardt,  and  shown 
to  contain  a  toxic  substance,  which  the  latter  author  isolated  in 
crystalline  form  and  called  hyenanchin.  It  is  now  shown  that  the 
crude  crystalline  material  isolated  from  the  plant  consists  of  two 
isomeric  crystalline  substances  of  the  formula  Ci5H1807 ;  One  of 
these  is  toxic  and  for  this  the  name  hyenanchin  is  'retained,  whilst 
the  other,  which  is  physiologically  inactive,  it  is  proposed  to  call 
uohyenanchin.  Pharmacological  investigation  of  these  two  sub- 
stances is  still  in  progress  by  Dr.  J.  Trevan  of  the  Wellcome  Physi- 
ological Research  Laboratories  but  sufficient  has  been  done  to  show 
that  hyenanchin  has  an  action,  weaker  than,  but  identical  in  kind 
with  that  of  picrotoxinin  and  so  belongs  to  the  group  of  non- 
nitrogenous,  convulsant  poisons.    It  is  interesting  in  this  connec- 
