Home › Acids › Nicotine, or Nicotia

Nicotine, or Nicotia

This is also a volatile, oily, acrid liquid, soluble in water, ether, alcohol, and oils. Nicotine, moistened with a solution of potassa, evolves a strong odor of tobacco. test of certain vegetable alkalies. The following are the colors of the precipitates which it produces with the salts of the annexed alkalies dissolved in water; quinine, buff-colored; cinchonine, sulphur-yellow; morphine, yellow, then bluish, and lastly, violet; in this last state the gold is reduced, and the precipitate is insoluble in water, alcohol, the caustic alkalies, and sulphuric, nitric, or hydrochloric acids; brucine, milk, coffee, and then chocolate-brown; strychnine, canary-yellow; ταιαtrine, slightly greenish-yellow. All these. precipitates, with the exception mentioned, are very soluble in alcohol, insoluble in ether, and slightly soluble in water. Among the reactions of chloride of gold, there are two which appear to be especially important: they are those which occur with morphine and brucine; these are sufficiently marked to prevent these alkalies from being mistaken for each other, and also yield pretty good characteristics for distinguishing brucine from strychnine.