THE ACONITE ALKALOIDS

Abstract

SUMMARY The failure of previous attempts to dehydrogenate aconitine and delphinine with selenium was caused possibly in part by the number and positions occupied by the substituting groups. Initial efforts have been made to achieve simpler derivatives for further degradation studies by systematic removal of such substituents. In the present work pyro-ac- oxodelphinine, now shown to be an unsaturated pyrolysis product of 01- oxodelphinine, has been used as the starting point. After isomerization with acid to isopyrooxodelphinine, a series of transformations was made which yielded finally a substance C22HS306N in which some of the original O-containing groups have been removed. Dehydrogenation of an ester of the latter has yielded a hydrocarbon, C1rH24, the absorption spectrum of which suggests that it may be a bicyclopentobenzene and in a different category from the phenanthrene hydrocarbons obtained from the atisine group of aconit#e bases.