Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  t 
March.  1901.  / 
The  Assay  of  Coca. 
125 
however,  a  syrup  so  made  will  be  found  cheaper  in  the  end,  if  there 
be  taken  into  account  not  only  the  time  wasted,  but  also  the 
pecuniary  loss  entailed  by  the  necessity  of  throwing  away  the 
spoiled  material. 
THE  ASSAY  OF  COCA. 
By  Wiijjam  R.  Lamar. 
Since  the  Committee  of  Revision  chosen  at  the  Eighth  Decen- 
nial Convention  for  revising  the  United  States  Pharmacopoeia,  held 
in  Washington,  during  the  early  part  of  May  of  last  year,  was  in- 
structed to  append  assay  processes  to  as  many  of  the  potent  drugs  and 
their  preparations  as  were  found  amenable  to  assay,  where  sim- 
plicity of  process,  both  as  to  method  and  apparatus  employed,  would 
lead  to  fairly  uniform  results  in  the  hands  of  different  workers,  it  is 
reasonable  therefore  to  expect  that  coca  will  receive  due  considera- 
tion at  the  hands  of  the  committee,  and  the  hope  is  entertained 
that  it  will  find  a  place  among  those  drugs  finally  selected  for  stand- 
ardization. 
Having  frequent  occasion  to  determine  the  alkaloidal  content  of 
this  drug,  it  is  thought  that  a  description  of  the  process  in  use  in 
this  laboratory,  and  one  which  has  been  found  to  give  perfectly 
satisfactory  results,  might  present  some  points  of  interest. 
It  is  scarcely  to  be  expected  that  much  which  is  new  or  original 
can  be  said  of  any  process  likely  to  be  put  forward  for  the  valuation 
of  this  or  related  drugs,  inasmuch  as  the  same  general  principle 
underlies  them  all. 
However,  by  calling  attention  to  and  emphasizing  such  points  in 
the  assay  as  have  been  found  essential,  results  are  easily  obtained 
which  are  quite  concordant  and  represent  fully  the  value  of  the 
drug  in  question. 
It  is  the  writer's  opinion  that  a  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  extreme 
instability  of  the  alkaloids  accompanying  coca  is,  in  the  main,  the 
cause  of  the  many  discordant  results  in  the  assays  published  of  this 
drug. 
As  is  well  known,  cocaine,  cinnamyl  cocaine  and  isatropyl 
cocaine  are  all  methyl  esters  of  a  differently  substituted  ecgonine 
molecule. 
