Gleditschine. Honey locust. Gleditschia triacanthos, Gleditschia macracantha.
Gleditschine.—Gleditschia triacanthos L., or Honey Locust, and G. Macracantha Desf. (Fam. Leguminosae), and are small, thorny trees having pinnate leases and forming elongated pods filled with a sweetish pulp. The trees grow in rich woods in the Eastern and Central United States and are common in cultivation. G. Macracantha is indigenous to China. These trees were chemically studied by B. F. Lautenbach (P. M. T; 1878), who abstracted from them an alkaloid, which he found to produce in the frog stupor and loss of reflex activity, due to an action upon the spinal cord. To this alkaloid Lautenbach gave the name of gleditschine. In 1887 (Med. Rec., 1887) Goodman, Seward, and Claiborne brought before the profession, as a local anesthetic, an alkaloid under the name of stenocarpine which was asserted to be obtained from the Gleditschia triacanthos. In November, 1888, however, F. W. Thompson, of Detroit (Med. Age), and T. G. Novy (Ph. Rund.) and John Marshall of the University of Pennsylvania (Phila. Med. News), published analyses of this solution, showing that it contained 6 per cent. of cocaine, besides some atropine or other mydriatic alkaloid. (See also A. J. P., 1887, 589.)
