Word: alkaloids
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Long used as a remedy for gout, colchicine is a slightly poisonous alkaloid compound which occurs in the seeds of the meadow saffron or autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale. Two years ago Dr. Albert Francis Blakeslee, famed geneticist of the Carnegie Institution's station on Long Is land, announced the discovery of remark able effects produced on plants by colchicine (TIME, Nov. 8, 1937). The drug causes a doubling of the chromosomes (heredity carriers) in the germ cells of vegetables and flowers, producing sharp changes which breed true. It increased the growth rates of tobacco, phlox, onions, pumpkins, cosmos, radishes...
...Abbott Laboratories, one of the "Big Four" makers of ''ethical" drugs,* began around the turn of the century when Dr. Wallace C. Abbott of Ravenswood started concocting his own alkaloid compounds in his kitchen because he was dissatisfied with those commercially available. In 1904 Dr. Alfred S. Burdick became associated with Dr. Abbott and both soon found all their energies taken up with their burgeoning drug business. Abbott Laboratories now occupy 27 buildings in North Chicago, have total assets of $8,846,000, made $1,415,000 last year of which $1,121,000 was paid...
...decay of animal or vegetable proteins. They appear in food substances only in the later stages of putrefaction. True ptomaine poisoning is almost unknown. The use of the term is a survival of the period when physicians believed that bacteria produced their injurious effects by means of basic alkaloid-like products. Now it is known that the bacteria themselves cause the trouble...
Highly controversial, however, the Anti-Sweet campaign provoked fevered controversy. Candy men (through Candy Weekly, a trade paper) compared the campaign to "a thief in the night," flayed the substitution of "a poisonous alkaloid" for "a nourishing food." Advertising men (through Advertising & Selling, a trade paper) discussed Good Testimonials v. Bad Testimonials, thought that Bad Testimonials were wrecking public confidence in advertising. Utah's Senator Reed Smoot (long interested in beet sugar & its tariff) said that there had not been such an orgy of buncombe since public opinion rose in its might and smote the drug traffic. He proposed...
Morphin is an alkaloid derived from opium. Its stupefying effects are like the effects of opium, and four times as strong. A "dope" (morphin addict) quivers with hunger as the time comes for his injection. Sometimes he has a hard time finding a place to take it; he goes into a hotel washroom, a taxicab, even a telephone booth. Out of his pocket comes a piece of candle. He wants to sterilize his injection. He puts water in a spoon, heats it over the candle, dissolves his morphin, filters the solution through cotton, fills his needle, injects...