Abstract
Paper chromatography is an analytical method for the separation of the components of mixtures of substances. A droplet of such a mixture in solution is placed on a small area of a piece of prepared filter paper, and a solvent is allowed to seep slowly through the paper. The compounds are washed along the paper at differing rates and, ideally, the mixture is separated into a series of spots along the paper, each spot consisting of a single component of the mixture. The sort of mixture which can be separated by this technique ranges from writing inks to complex mixtures of drugs extracted from biological materials.
This paper describes an improved paper chromatographic technique for separating for identification the intermediate- and short-acting barbiturate hypnotic drugs—butobarbitone (soneryl), amylobarbitone (amytal), pentobarbitone (nembutal) and quinal-barbitone (Seconal). It is pointed out that 76 per cent. of cases of barbiturate poisoning studied in the Department of Forensic Medicine of the London Hospital Medical College in 1960 involved intermediate- or short-acting barbiturates and that in 20 per cent. of the cases two or more of these occurred together. The necessity of being able to separate and identify these barbiturates is of considerable importance both for medico-legal and statistical reasons.
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