,312
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
MARCH.1932
Insanity believed related to jellying of brain proteins. Bulbocapnin, a drug made from Corydalis, a flower related t o the "bleeding-hearts" of old-fashioned gardens, and to the "Dutchman's breeches" of the spring woods, will temporarily bring t o consdoust the characteristic stupor of the mental disease catatonia, Dr. Wilder ness a ~ a t i e n in D. Banaoft, professor of physical chemistry a t Cornell University, reported t o the National Academy of Sciences recently in New Haven. Dr. Bancraft attributes this action of the drug to the fact that i t has a coagulating effect on the brain proteins, thickening them in much the same way that an egg -~ is jellied hy heat. He discussed an observation made by Dr. Walter Freeman of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D. C., that the drug bulbocapnin produces a cataleptic state in cats. Df. Freeman identified this catalepsy as corresponding t o dementia praecox catatonia in man. Dr. Bancroft disagrees, however. If this were so, he told the soientists, bulbocapnin should have e thinning effect on proteins. And it dws not; it is a coagulating agent. So Dr. Bancroft holds that the bulbocapnin catalepsy in cats has nothing t o do with catatonia, hut corresponds to what is called a "benign stupor." A relation exists between the type of insanity from which a patient may suffer and the state of thinning or thickening of his brain proteins, Drs. H. Beckett Land and J. A. I'aterson of Willard, N. Y., told the same meeting. The common mental disease schizophrenia exists where the brain proteins are over-thin. Manic-depressive and epileptic patients are in a coagulated state, they reported. Sodium amytal and sodium rhodadate, two drugs believed to have an effect on the chemistry of the hrain, should be helpful for the physician making a diagnosis of mental disease. They may also supplement the present methods of treatment, although they will not replace them, the investigators said.-Science Service ~
