The Spectrophotometric Determination of Certain Alkaloids and Application To Pharmaceutical Preparations

Abstract

Abstract A method is described for the determination of atropine, hyoscyamine, quinine, quinidine, brucine, strychnine and physostigmine by formation of the picrate of the alkaloid in an aqueous buffer at pH 7 followed by extraction of the picrate into chloroform. The picric acid is re-extracted into an alkaline buffer at pH 11 and the absorption measured at 3550 Å. The method has been applied to injections, tablets and other pharmaceutical preparations. The results are in agreement with those obtained by the official methods. The advantages of the method include its usefulness when dealing with small samples and the shorter assay time compared with classical methods.