Assay of Digitalis

The uses of the outer walls of the right ventricles of guinea pigs and of auricles of rabbits for the assay of digitalis have been reinvestigated. The results obtained are compared with those obtained by slow intravenous infusion in guinea pigs (B.P. 1958) and the pigeon method (U.S.P. XV). The results obtained by the use of isolated auricles indicate that this method is reasonably accurate, cheap and less time-consuming than other methods and has the further advantage that the test sample is compared with the standard on the same tissue.