The constituents of some cucurbitaceous plants / by Frederick B. Power.

  • Frederick Belding Power
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The constituents of some cucurbitaceous plants / by Frederick B. Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/18 (page 150)
    I April, 1912. sesses an extremely bitter taste, and represents one of the purgative principles of the fruit, ihe acjueous liquid contained, furthermore, a quantity of inorganic salts, a little sugar, and a very small amount of an amorphous, glucosidic substance. Ihe substance designated citrullol is of special interest, inasmuch as it is a member of a group of dihydric alcohols which form an homologous series, represented by the general formula CnH2„-e04. The other known members of this group, which were likewise isolated in these laboratories, are: ipuranol, C28H3802(0H)2, which was first obtained from the stems of Ipomcea purpurea, Roth,10 but has since been found to be a constituent of numerous other plants, and tri- folianol, C21H3402(0H)2, which was first isolated from red clover flowers,* 11 subsequently from the flowers of the carnation clover,12 and quite recently from Calabar beans.13 The portion of the above-mentioned alcoholic extract which was insoluble in water consisted chiefly of resinous material, but from it a quantity of a-elaterin,14 C2SH3807(m.p. 2320 ; [a]D-68.9°) was isolated. On subsequently extracting the resin with various sol- vents, it yielded, furthermore, a small amount of hentriacontane, C31H04; a phytosterol, C27H4C0 (m.p. 160-162°) ; a mixture of fatty acids, and an additional amount of a-elaterin, together with a little of the above-described alkaloidab principle. The ether and chloro- form extracts of the resin possessed marked purgative properties. The seeds of the colocynth, which amounted to 75.5 per cent, of the entire peeled fruit, were extracted with light petroleum, when they yielded 12.7 per cent, of their weight of a fatty oil. The latter was found to agree very closely in character with the oils from some other cucurbitaceous seeds, such as those of the pumpkin and watermelon, which will subsequently be described. The colocynth seeds also contain a small amount of an enzyme which hydrolyses /3-glucosides, and traces of an alkaloidal principle, which is probably identical with that contained in the pulp of the fruit. The results of the recent research on the constituents of colocynth have, on the one hand, afforded conclusive evidence that the so-called “ colocynthin ” and “ colocynthitin ” of previous investigators were 10 Power and Rogerson, this Journal, 1908, 80, p. 264. 11 Power and Salway, Journ. Chem. Soc., 1910, 97, p. 249. V1 Rogerson, Ibid., 1910, 97, p. 1014. 13 Salway, Ibid., 1911, 99, p. 2154.