Licence: In copyright
Credit: The plant alkaloids / by Thomas Anderson Henry. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![ALKALOID OF DIOSCOREA HIRSUTA Dioscorine, C13H19O2N, was obtained from the stems of the Javanese plant Dioscorea hirsuta, Blume, by BoorsmaJ and was afterwards investigated by Schutte ^ and by Gorter/^ It forms greenish-yellow plates, m.p. 43-5°, distils unchanged in vacuo, is soluble in water, alcohol, or chloroform and sparingly so in ether or benzene. The hydrochloride, B .HCl. 2H2O, forms colourless needles, m.p. 204°, [a]o + 4° 40', from alcohol; the platinichloride, (B.HC1)2. PtCl4.3H20, orange-yellow tablets, m.p. 199°-200° [dry) ; the aurichloride, B.HAUCI4.I-H2O, yellow needles, m.p. 171° [dry). With sulphuric acid and potassium iodate dioscorine gives a blue-violet coloration and a reddish-violet with sodium nitro- prusside in presence of alkalis. According to Gorter, dioscorine contains a : NCH3, but no —OH group. When heated with potash it yields a salt from which acids regenerate the alkaloid, so that the latter is probably a lactone. Heated with silver oxide dioscorine methiodide gives demethyl- dioscoridine, C13H21N, and the methiodide of this when heated with silver oxide gives trimethylamine and a hydrocarbon, C44H 14> which appears to be a butenylc?/cfoheptatriene. On these grounds Gorter assigns the following formula to dioscorine : CHa—CH—CH2 I I NMe CH.O.CO I I I CHg—CH—CH C: CMeg The alkaloid is bitter and poisonous ; it produces paralysis of the central nervous system and in general behaves like picrotoxin. This ^ Meded. ii.it’s Lands Plantentuin, 1894, p. 13. ^ CJiem. Cenfr. 1897, ii. 130. ^ Ann. Jard. Bot. Buit. 1909, ii. ; SuppI.-3, 385. « Bee. Trav. Chim. 1911, 30, 161.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2196189x_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
