Am  jour  Pharm. )        Glycyrrhizin  in  Licorice  Root.  389 
June,  1921.       )  J  J 
portant  work  published  on  this  subject.  Such  a  list  has  not  been 
given  before.  The  reviews  in  the  older  works  such  as  Flikkiger's 
"Pharmakogno^ie,"  Husemann's  "Pflanzenstoffe,"  Tschirch's  "Hand- 
buch  der  Pharmakognozie,',  DragendorfFs  "Die  Heilpflanze,"  and 
Wehmer's  "Pflanzenstoffe,"  are  far  from  complete.  Further,  since 
the  "Jahresbericht  der  Pharmazie"  has  not  noted  all  of  the  articles, 
it  was  only  possible  to  make  such  a  list  after  examining  all  of  the 
journals  concerned. 
Through  the  kind  offices  of  several  gentlemen,  it  was  possible 
for  me  to  examine  nearly  all  of  the  articles  in  the  original.  I  was 
also  able  to  work  on  nearly  all  of  the  original  articles  in  foreign 
journals,  thanks  to  the  use  of  the  journal  catalog  of  the  "Auskunfts- 
stelle  deutscher  Bibliotheken"  now  in  the  press,  as  well  as  the  use 
of  the  library  of  the  "Deutschen  Apotheker-Vereins,"  and  of  the 
"Reichsgesundheitsamt.es."  In  the  case  of  those  publications  which 
I  could  not  see  in  the  original,  I  have  used  those  abstracts  which 
were  available  to  me. 
The  Quantitative  Determination  of  Glycyrrhizin  in  Licorice. 
The  idea  of  determining  the  glycyrrhizin  content,  and  of  using 
it  for  the  evaluation  of  licorice,  belongs  to  Rump.  As  I  have  already 
indicated,  he  made  the  following  statement  in  1855 :  "The  value  of 
licorice  is  best  determined  from  its  content  of  glycyrrhizin,  as  is 
that  of  opium  from  its  content  of  morphine."  This  statement  did 
not  remain  uncontradicted.  Shortly  afterwards,  Hager  claimed  the 
contrary.  In  spite  of  that,  however,  he  stated  there  should  be  at 
least  10  per  cent,  glycyrrhizin  in  licorice  extract.  The  next  decades 
brought  forth  a  large  number  of  proposals  for  the  quantitaive  de- 
termination of  glycyrrhizin,  from  which  it  must  be  deduced  that  this 
determination  was  of  value  for  determining  the  quality  of'  any  vari- 
ety of  licorice.  In  later  years,  however,  more  attention  has  been 
given  to  the  sugar  determination.  This  is  justified.  Outside  of  the 
obvious  estimations  of  the  soluble  and  insoluble  portions,  and  of  the 
ash,  the  determinations  of  glycyrrhizic  acid  and  sugars  are  indis- 
pensable for  a  correct  valuation.  For  example,  by  determining 
the  glycyrrhizin  alone,  one  could  not  detect  the  frequently-occurring 
adulteration  with  sugar,  of  an  extract  containing  much  glycyrrhizin. 
For  this  reason  many  of  the  later  workers  on  this  subject  have 
taken  up  determination  of  sugars.  I  would  only  name  here  House- 
man, Telle,  Parry,  Tschirch,  etc. 
