The animal alkaloids cadaveric and vital or, the ptomaines and leucomaines : chemically, physiologically and pathologically considered in relation to scientific medicine / by A. M. Brown.

  • Brown, A. M.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The animal alkaloids cadaveric and vital or, the ptomaines and leucomaines : chemically, physiologically and pathologically considered in relation to scientific medicine / by A. M. Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    91/292 (page 59)
    proposed. This is a combination of hydro- chloric acid, chloride of iron, chromic anhydride, and ferricyanide of iron. This, it was alleged, gave Prussian blue with all the ptomaines, while morphine alone of the vegetable alkaloids was capable of yielding it. Brieger, however, was unable to verify this reaction in the case of any of the alkaloids discovered by him. There is, then, no common method by which in every case any given vegetable alkaloid can be distinguished from any given ptomaine. A particular alkaloid, however, may be distin- guished from a ptomaine by a series of par- ticular features. As they are of the utniost importance, we refer those practically engaged upon the subject to M. Gautier’s contributions ; their consideration forms an invaluable page of his masterly rndmoire ; from the nature of the present study what is required of us is merely to indicate them. As may be known, the object of the Italian Ptomaine Commission was not so much the investigation of the nature and existence of these alkaloids, as determining whether medico- legally their presence might give rise to gross miscarriage of justice from expert misappre- hension. As those bases, fixed or volatile, of cadaveric materials might be readily confounded