Therapeutics. — As these agents are extensively administered hypodermically, it was at one time feared they might serve as vehicles for micro-organisms which in themselves might become pa thogenic. In a series of experiments having for their object to answer these questions and to determine a method for the sterilization of such medicines Mari nueci found (1) that, while all prepara tions studied contained microbes, all these microbes are not harmful. (2) That sterilization by heat does not alter solutions of strychnine, curare, bihydro chlorate of quinine, or borate of eserine. It enfeebles, but does not alter, the char acter of morphine and atropine. After sterilization, however, these drugs must be used in larger doses. The sulphate of eserine was found to be seriously altered, so that the solutions were, in a great measure, rendered inert. (3) That, to those solutions which are altered by heat, corrosive sublimate should be added in the proportion of 1 to 10,000. % This seems to be efficacious, and in no way to injure the value of the alkaloid when given hypodermically.
LEGAL MEDICINE.—In medical juris prudence alkaloids often come into play, the smallness of the dose of many of these salts serving the purpose of evil doers or suicides. By well-known means their presence may be determined in the majority of cases; but still obscure in this connection is the influence of putre factive processes—such as those which take place, after death, in the body— upon alkaloids which may have been administered during life. Ottolenghi
recently conducted a number of experi ments in order to ascertain the action of saprophytic micro-organisms on atropine and strychnine. He first tried the effect of adding a known quantity of atropine to some sterilized bouillon (1 to 10,000), which was afterward tested by dropping a couple of drops of it into a rabbit's eye. The usual effects of atropine ensued: the pupil dilated fully under the influence of the unaffected atrophic. He then substituted for the sterilized bouillon separate cultures, in bouillon, of bacillus mesentericus, bacillus vulgatus, bacillus liquefaciens putridus, bacillus subtilis, and bacillus diffuses, which he had ob tained from a human cadaver, the result being that the mydriatic effect of the atropine was entirely destroyed in four or five days by the action of the micro organisms. A similar series of experi ments were made with strychnine, the test for the alkaloid being that of inject ing a certain quantity of the solution into a frog, the quantity being propor tionate to the weight of the frog. It was found that for the first few days the toxic action of the strychnine, subjected to the influence of the bacteria, was distinctly increased; subsequently it was diminished. Some separate experiments made with cultures of bacillus coli and strychnine showed that, with this bac terium, the toxicity of the alkaloid ma terially diminished from the first. After an exposure of three months the alkaloid had lost one-half of its potency. (J. Dixon Mann.)