ALKALOIDS  OP  THE  GENUS  ACONITUM.  233 
actions,  and  can  be  kept  indefinitely  without  injury ;  it  is  freely 
soluble,  dissolving  almost  instantly  on  being  thrown  into  water, 
and  forming  a  perfectly  clear  solution  without  residue ;  it  has 
also  a  pleasant  acid  taste,  and  has  proven  to  be  a  valuable  agent 
in  the  sick  room. 
This  preparation,  like  almost  all  other  things,  requires  skillful 
manipulating  to  insure  good  results.  The  writer  has  made  sev- 
eral thousand  pounds  of  this  salt,  and  has  invariably  found  that 
whenever  the  directions  were  implicitly  carried  out,  satisfactory 
products  were  the  results. 
The  Granular  Salts  of  Kissingen,  Vichy,  and  Saratoga,  are 
also  made  by  the  above  firm,  of  which  the  writer,  in  a  future 
number,  proposes  to  offer  a  few  ideas  as  to  their  mode  of  manu- 
facture. 
ON  THE  ALKALOIDS  OF  THE  GKNUS  ACONITUM. 
By  Dr.  F.  A.  Fluckiger. 
From  the  interesting  essay  of  the  author,  published  in  the 
Archiv  der  Pharmacie,  1870,  March,  196-215,  we  make  the 
following  extracts: 
In  1857  Schrofi''s  physiological  experiments  proved  the  exist- 
ence in  aconite  tubers  of  two  principles,  one  mainly  narcotic  in 
its  action,  and  agreeing  in  this  respect  with  the  aconitia  in  use 
on  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  particularly  in  Germany,  which 
has  mainly  been  made  by  the  late  F.  Hiibschmann,  of  Zurich ; 
the  other  one  being  extremely  acrid,  a  property  possessed  also 
by  ''pure  aconitia,"  obtained  by  Schroff  from  T.  Morson  &  Son 
in  London,  and  by  pharmaceutical  preparations  made  from  bikh, 
bish,  or  ativisha,  that  is  the  tubers  of  some  species  of  aconitum, 
among  them  aconitum  ferox,  indigenous  to  the  Alpine  regions 
of  the  Himalaya  mountains.  Since  that  time  it  was  supposed, 
in  Germany,  that  all  English  aconitia  consists  of  this  acrid  alka- 
loid, for  which  Hiibschmann  proposed  the  name  of  pseudaconitia 
(Schweiz :  Wochenschr.  f.  Pharm.  1868,  p.  189),  and  gave  the 
following  characteristics :  It  is  with  difficulty  soluble  in  ether, 
chloroform,  and  alcohol,  but  crystallizes  readily,  particularly 
from  hot  alcohol ;  it  is  soluble  in  hot  benzol ;  is  not  altered  by 
boiling  water,  and  not  colored  by  cold  sulphuric  acid ;  also  not 
