235 XVIIL-Note o n Igasurine. By W. A. SHENSTONE. THE three alkaloids said to be present in the seeds of Strychnos n7m vomica all have poisonous properties ascribed to them and it is note-worthy that t,hese differ only in degree strychnine being by far the most active brucine the least. In some experiments described in a paper read before the Pharmaceutical Society in December 1877 (Phamn. Joum. Dee. 8 1877) I showed that commercial brucine contains quantities of strychnine varying from 1 to 4 per cent. and I suggested that its physiological action might be due to this circum-stance ; and this seems the more probable as Dragendorf and inde-pendently I myself have obtained small quantities of strychnine from false Angostura bark from which Pelletier and Caventou originally obtained the brucine with which they experimented and which they believed to be free from the former alkaloid.Igasurine is said by its discoverer Desnoix (J. Pharm. [3] 25 202) to differ from brucine in its solubility in water and in its activity as a poison ; on the other hand Jorgensen ( J . pr. Chem. [2] iii 175) has found a specimen of reputed igasurine to consist of brucine only. These various statements and the observations cited above have made me find it interesting to prepare some alkalo'id from the source from which Desnoix obtained his so-called igasurine and to examine it, particularly with regard to the presence of strychnine. Four gallons of an aqueous decoction of nux vomica beans from which the alkaloids had been precipitated by boiling with lime were obtained (through the kind interest of Messrs.Hopkins and Williams) and after nentrali-sation were evaporated on the water-bakh to half a litre or rather less ; the product which was astonishingly free from gummy matters, was rendered alkaline with ammonia and a precipitate which fell separated. The mother-liquor which still contained much alkaloild, was precipitated with tannin and the alkaloyd obtained from the precipitate by pressing it mixing with excess of calcium hydrate, drying and exhausting with boiling rectified spirit by which means the whole of the residual alkaloids were obtained. The two products were separately treated with dilute alcohol. In each case the greater part dissolved while a smaller portion remained insoluble and after recrystallisation gave the reaction of strychnine.The soluble portions on examination were found to have the ordinary characters of brucine. I did not examine these minutely as I have found that the brucine of commerce does not always present identical characters and I suspec 236 DOBBIN ON SOME REACTIONS OF i t to be a mixture of an alkaloid present in the nux vomica beans and another body probably a saponification product in variable proportions. I have a considerable supply of brucine in my possession which I have prepared by a special process and I am now engaged in examining it, with a view to deciding this and other points. The amount of strychnine obtained was in the part precipitated by ammonia at least 5 per cent. ; in the other portion somewhat less and there can be no doubt that a furt,her portion in each case went into solution with the brucine. These results I think sufficiently explain the superior activity of Desnoix’s alkaloid to that of brucine and go with Jorgensen’s obser-vations to show that the igasurine of Desnoix was not brucine but a mixture of that substance with strychnine,-its other character i.e. its superior solubility being of little weight as the solubility of brucine and of some of its salts varies considerably with their degree of purity