Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
March,  1909. 
J  Developments  in  Alkaloidal  Assaying.  127 
difficult  to  find  the  means  for  their  extraction.  No  doubt  among 
these  means  dialysis  will  play  an  important  part.  In  most  of  the 
cases  attention  will  be  paid  to  proper  selection  of  the  menstruum. 
In  any  case,  as  Boulanger-Dausse  points  out,  the  time  has  arrived 
to  return  from  the  purely  chemical  treatment  of  the  drug-  to  the 
pharmaceutic  technical  treatment  on  scientific  bases ;  thus  a  way  for 
a  co-operation  between  the  physician  and  druggist  opens  itself  and 
it  is  impossible  to  foresee  the  benefit  to  the  science  of  such  co- 
operation. 
Returning  to  the  proper  scope  of  my  paper  ci  Development  in 
Alkaloidal  Assay,"  I  must  say  that  the  year  1908  was  not  particularly 
rich  in  progress  along  this  line.  While  in  the  year  1907  a  new  precip- 
itant for  alkaloids  was  offered  (Picrolonic  Acid)  and  there  was  quite 
a  discussion  on  certain  U.  S.  P.  alkaloidal  processes,  in  the  course 
of  which  a  good  many  important  improvements  were  suggested, 
during  the  last  year  no  new  methods  for  isolation  of  alkaloids  were 
suggested,  neither  important  improvements  in  alkaloidal  processes 
were  published,  although  some  minor  points  were  brought  out. 
Fluidextracts  of  Belladonna  and  Hyoscyamus. — Shortly  after  the 
appearance  of  the  Fourth  Edition  of  the  German  Pharmacopoeia, 
E.  Merck  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  method  of  the  Phar- 
macopoeia for  these  extracts  gave  results  which  were  20  to  50  per 
cent,  too  high.  It  could  be  proven  experimentally  that  the  reason 
for  these  high  results  were  certain  volatile  bases  which  were  not 
driven  off  in  evaporating  the  chloroform  extract  to  half  volume. 
As  it  was  not  advisable  to  evaporate  the  chloroform  solution  of 
alkaloids  to  dryness  on  account  of  decomposition  of  chloroform 
with  formation  of  hydrochloric  acid,  Merck  suggested  the  use  of 
ether  instead  of  chloroform  and  evaporating  this  to  dryness.  E.  Rupp 
had  occasion  to  verify  Merck's  work  and  found,  in  accordance  with 
the  latter,  that  the  method  of  the  German  Pharmacopoeia  did  not 
give  concordant  results,  the  alkaloidal  content  of  the  drug  estimated 
by  this  method  being  sometimes  twice  as  high  as  that  found  by 
Merck's  modified  process.  The  new  Swiss  Pharmacopoeia  does  not 
consider  the  evaporation  of  the  ethereal  extract  to  dryness  sufficient 
and  requires  that  the  residue  of  the  ethereal  extraction  should  be 
dissolved  in  5  c.c.  of  ether  and  evaporated  again,  and  this  solution 
and  evaporation  should  be  repeated  twice.  Rupp  assayed  a  certain 
extract  by  the  three  different  methods  and  obtained  the  following 
results : 
