PROCEEDINGS of the AMERICAN PHARMACEUTICAL ASSOCIATION, 32 (BE%), THE ASSAY OF HYOSCYAMUS.* BY H. G . DEKAY' AND c. B. JORDAN.
Hyoscyamus has been official in the past four revisions of the U. S. Pharmacopceia, and an assay process has been described in the last three. The changes occurring in this assay have been primarily in that part of it dealing with the extraction of the alkaloids from the crude drug. In the U. S. P. VIII (first official process) the drug was macerated for 10 minutes with a mixture of 1 part of chloroform and 3 parts of ether; then ammonia water was added and the contents agitated during 1 hour. The final extraction was made from a basic mixture by the use of chloroform.
In the U. S. P. IX, the process of extraction was changed as follows: the drug was agitated during 2 hours with 300 cc. of a mixture of 1 volume of chloroform and 3 volumes of ether to which ammonia water had been added. An aliquot part of the immiscible solvent was then decanted and the assay completed as indicated in the first process. The U. s. P. X changed this to a percolation process, the same solvent being used.
Various workers encountered many difficulties in the assay of this drug with the result that a number of processes have been presented for consideration during the past decade.
Watkins and Palkin (l), workers in the Drug Control Laboratory, Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, described a method for the assay of Hyoscyamus "which gave a yield of from two to three times as much alkaloid as that obtained by the U. S. P. IX and X methods."
In order to check the various processes for the assay of Hyoscyamus, C.