388  Glycyrrhizin  in  Licorice  Root.        { Amj Jne,ri^arm 
COMPARATIVE  RESEARCHES  ON  THE  METHODS  PRO- 
POSED FOR  THE  ESTIMATION  OF  GLYCYRRHIZIN 
IN  LICORICE  ROOT  AND  IN  LICORICE  EXTRACT. 
By  Armin  Linz. 
{Prize  Research  of  the  Hagen-Bucholz  Foundation,  1913-1914.) 
(Archiv  der  Rharmazie,  1916,  Vol.  254,  65-134,  and  204-224.) 
TRANSLATED  BY  DR.  PERCY  A.  HOUSEMAN.    APRIL,  I92I. 
For  a  long  time  past,  workers  have  concerned  themselves  with 
a  large  numer  of  researches  and  publications  on  the  constituents  of 
licorice  root  and  extract.  As  early  as  about  1800,  Pfaff,  Hermb- 
stadt  and  Schwartze  published  statements  on  the  composition  of 
licorice  root  and  extract,  and  also  made  known  the  characteristic 
precipitates  which  various  reagents  produced  with  an  infusion.  In 
the  succeeding  decades,  the  literature  on  this  subject  attained  a  con- 
siderable volume.  All  of  these  researches,  however,  up  to  about 
1880,  propose  only  the  isolation  of  the  characteristic  ingredient  of 
the  root  and  extract,  without  placing  any  emphasis  on  a  quantitative 
determination  of  it.  Although  for  this  reason,  the  above-mentioned 
researches  have  no  direct  connection  with  the  methods  used  for  the 
determination  of  glycyrrhizin,  still  I  deem  it  necessary  to  give  a  sur- 
vey of  them.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  naturally  a  certain  depend- 
ency between  the  first  experiments  for  the  isolation  of  a  substance 
and  its  quantitative  determination ;  further,  such  a  summary,  taking 
into  consideration  all  the  papers  which  have  appeared,  has  not 
hitherto  been  attempted.1  The  short  summaries  which  precede  the 
researches  of  Tschirch,  Rasenak,  Cederberg  and  Gauchmann,  are  in- 
complete, and  are  also  partly  erroneous. 
In  Appendix  A  is  given  a  list  of  all  the  researches  which  are 
concerned  with  the  ingredients  of  licorice  root  and  extract,  their 
chemistry  and  their  quantitative  examination.  The  claim  may  be 
made  for  this  collection  that  it  takes  account  of  all  the  more  im- 
1  The  contents  of  these  publications  are  given  in  the  original  dissertation 
in  adequate  fashion.  At  this  time,  however,  it  will  suffice  to  communicate  the 
author's  results  concerning  the  quantitative  examination  of  licorice  extract 
and  root,  and  for  the  rest,  to  refer  to  the  bibliography  in  Appendix  A. — The 
Editor. 
