Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury.

Friedrich August Flückiger

Date:: 1874

Credit: Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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$section, consists of a central part enclosed by a delicate cambial zone. The outer part of this central portion exhibits a thin brownish layer made up of a single row of cells {Jzernscluide, of the Germans). This is more distinctly obvious in the rootlets, which' also show numerous, scattered, thick-walled cells of a yellow colour. The fibro-vascular bundles of aconite root are devoid of true ligneous cells ; its tissue is for the largest part built up of uniform parenchymatous cells loaded with starch granules. Chemical Composition — Aconite contains chemical principles which are of great interest on account of their virulent effects on the animal economy. The first to be mentioned is Aconitine, discovered by Geiger and Hesse in 1833, and obtainable from the root to the extent of 3 or 4 per mille. Von Planta (1850) assigned to it the formula C^oh^^nO^ ; DuquesneP (1871), whose analysis relates to crystallized aconitine (of A. Napellus) C^*H^*^]S[0^. For many years it was only known in the form of a light, pulverizable, colourless, amorphous mass. In the London Exhibition of 1862, Morson, the well-known manufacturing chemist, whose aconitine had long been held in great repute, exhibited it in large well-defined crystals. On the same occasion small specimens of the crystallized alkaloid were shown by Groves of Weymouth, and also crystallized hydrochlorate, hydriodate, and nitrate, prepared two years previously by a process he afterwards described in print.- About the year 1858 it became known to chemists that a substance was being sold under the name of Aconitine, the properties of which were somewhat diverse from those held to be characteristic of that alkaloid, and there was much doubt and speculation as to its origin. It is now known that this body, which is named Pseud-aconitine, and has been also termed English Aconitine, Napelline (Wiggers), Nepaline (Fliickiger), and Acraconitine (Ludwig), is derived from the aconite called in India Bish (see p. 12), which English manufacturing chemists have long preferred (whenever it could be obtained) to the aconite root of Europe. With these facts in view, and a plentiful supply of each kind of aconite. Groves has re-examined the alkaloids of this drug; and his experiments, though not yet (January 1874) concluded, have established the following facts:— European aconite root, derived from^. Napellus, afibrds aconitine in two forms,—crystalline and amor-plious. Indian or Nepal aconite root, presumed to be obtained chiefly from A. ferox, yields a closely allied substance. Pseud-aconitine, also under two forms,—crystalline and amor- phous. The characters by which these substances are distinguished have been thus recorded by Mr. Groves. Aconitine, whether crystalline or amorphous, does not fuse or soften in boiling water. Crystalline Pseud-aconitine does not soften in boiling water, but if ■^ Journ. de Pharw. et de Chim. xiv. of Groves was that of A. Napellus. We (1871) 94 ; De VAconitini cristallisie et des cannot undertake to say whether the crys- preparations d'aconit, quoted in Pharm. tallized aconitine of Morson was this Journ. Jan. 27, 1872. 602. alkaloid, or whether it was that now known ^ Pharm Journ. viii. (1867) 118.—The as Pseud-aconitine. crystallized salt shows that the aconitine ^ Pharm. Journ. Oct. 11, 1873. 293—296.$