Ergotoxine and some other constituents of ergot : by George Barger and H.H. Dale.

  • Barger, George, 1878-1939.
Date:
[1907?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ergotoxine and some other constituents of ergot : by George Barger and H.H. Dale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/64 (page 245)
    experiments have, however, led us to believe that all these acidic preparations owed their activity to a powerfully active amorphous alkaloid, of which crystalline salts were isolated by F. H. Carr and one of us, and to which the name ergotoxine was given (45). Soon afterwards Kraft (46) described the same alkaloid under the name hydroergotinine, regarding it as the hydrate of Tanret’s ergotinine. Recently ergotoxine and some of its salts have been described in detail by Barger and Carr (51), who, from their analyses, assign to ergotoxine the formula C35H4i06N5, and to ergotinine the formula C35H39O5N5, thus establishing Kraft’s view as to the relationship of the two alkaloids. Meanwhile a substance of an entirely different kind, neither acidic nor alkaloidal, was described by Vahlen (44) as the essential therapeutic principle of ergot. With the nature of this substance, to which he gave the name ‘ clavin,’ we shall deal in a later section of the paper. Ergotoxine Chemical The chemical description of the alkaloid ergotoxine, which has already been given elsewhere by Barger and Carr (51), may be sum¬ marised as follows :—Ergotoxine is a white amorphous powder having the composition CssH^OeNs, and melting, with decomposition, at 162° to 164°. It is freely soluble in most organic solvents, but only slightly so in ether, and is insoluble in light petroleum. It is soluble in dilute caustic soda, and is a feeble monacid base. Ergotoxine forms crystalline salts, one of the most characteristic of which is the phosphate C35H4i06N5, H3P04, H20, forming minute needles, melting at 1860 to 187°. Barger and Carr have amended Tanret’s original formula for crystalline ergotinine to C35H3905N5. (Compare with this Tanret’s recent formula, C35H40O5N5 (49).) Hence it will be seen that the crystalline alkaloid is the anhydride of the amorphous, as first suggested by Kraft. Either alkaloid can be readily converted into the other. Both give the colour reaction described by Tanret and by Keller as