INTRODUCTORY NOTE. -In 1939, Gerda Dangschat and Hermann 0. L. Fischer published a communicationi on the structure of condmitol and in that paper they described the preparation of two new inositols, muco-inositol and ago-inositol. At that time, Gerda Dangschat was at the University of Berlin, while Hermann Fischer was at the Banting Institute at the University of Toronto. These two had known one another for a long time inasmuch as Mrs. Dangschat (n6e Gerda Anger) had worked with Emil Fischer and had married Paul Dangschat, who had also worked in Emil Fischer's laboratory. So the collaboration of Dangschat and Fischer, begun in Berlin, had continued after Fischer moved to Base1 in 1932 and also after his move to Toronto in 1936. The upheaval of World War II brought an end to their joint research, and the full paper on conduritol and the new inositols did not appear as planned. However, Hermann Fischer never lost his admiration for Gerda Dangschat and the work that they had done together. A large cardboard box labelled "Condurango bark" sitting on a shelf in the lab in Toronto even in the late 1940's sewed as a constant reminder of this fruitful association.
In the early 1950's, Hermann Fischer showed me a German manuscript which he had, at some earlier time, received from Gerda Dangschat. This contained the experimental part of the conduritol work, and Fischer was considering publishing it after a few loose ends were cleared up. At his suggestion I prepared an English translation, but the pressure of more urgent matters prevented us from undertaking further experimental work. The manuscript was again set aside, and the German version seems to have disappeared sometime after the death of Hermann Fischer in 1960. Fortunately I retained a copy of the translation.
A number of syntheses of allo-inositol and of muco-inositol have been published since the original communication appeared almost fifty years ago, but from the historical point of view the experimental details of the first preparation are of interest. This volume, commemorating the centenaries of the births of three illustrious carbohydrate chemists of the Emil Fischer school-Karl Freudenberg, Burckhardt Helferich, and Hermann 0. L. Fischer---seems a most appropriate place for publication of this work.