The old vegetable neurotics : hemlock, opium, belladonna and henbane; their physiological action and therapeutical use, alone and in combination being the Gulstonian Lectures of 1868, extended and including a complete examination of the active constituents of opium / by John Harley.

  • Harley, John, 1833-1921.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The old vegetable neurotics : hemlock, opium, belladonna and henbane; their physiological action and therapeutical use, alone and in combination being the Gulstonian Lectures of 1868, extended and including a complete examination of the active constituents of opium / by John Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    II. Having liqnified a portion of the extract of tlie root (described above), I v^asbed it tborougblj with a mixture of setber and cbloroform, and after separation distilled off tbe latter bj means of a liot water bath. A small quantity of light yellowish-brown oily matter of neutral reaction remained. It had a faint, fatty, non-characteristic odour, and a warm, slightly bitter, rancid taste. Heated with caustic potash it evolved no odour of conia. After this mixture had been retained at a temperature of 212° Fahr. for some minutes, it was shaken with sether, which dissolved out a little brown subcrystalline matter having a faint odour and taste of rhizoconine. III. April 10, 1867.—250 grains of the same extract of the root were liquified with a little water, and fl. 3iv. of solution of caustic potash (1 part to 3 of water). The mix- ture was thoroughly washed with separate portions of sether, and the latter decanted. After distillation of the aether there remained 1*8 grain of light brown oily matter, which after standing-by for a few hours became in great part solid, from the formation of beautiful dendritic masses of crystals. It had a mixed odour of conia and tobacco, and an acrid cooling minty taste, becoming very bitter and tobacco-like. It contained but the faintest trace of conia, and was com- posed, like the ' sethereal extract,' from the retort remainder, and in about the same proportions, of rhizoconine, rhizo- conylene, and conamarine—the first of these bodies being, in both cases, the most abundant, and the last the least so. After separation of the conia and conamarine, the remainder (about 1 grain) was dissolved in a mixture of 15 minims of alcohol and 5 of aether, and injected beneath the skin of a cat. It produced no effect whatever. lY. As it occurred to me that the conia might be stored up in the root in some insoluble combination, I took the whole of the roots from which the juice had been expressed, weighing now 4J pounds, and pulped them the same day with 30 ounces of hot water holding 4 ounces of caustic potash in solution. The whole of the house was filled with a very powerful and disagreeable mousy odour. The mixture was set aside for 24 hours. At the end of this time 17