What’s good about this test was that finally a simple method was found to get rid of the side effect causing compounds in Anadenanthera. They are all very polar and easy to remove because they can’t be eluted from the silica gel even with methanol! So you simply pass your 1:1 mix of methanol and ethyl acetate dissolved alkaloid mix through silica gel, and all of the good stuff elutes and all the bad stuff stays stuck on the silica gel! You don’t even need to run a proper column, you just use the silica as a filter medium! It’s really quite cool!

This might also work using Whatman 1PS filter paper, which should effectively remove all the polar compounds in the same way they stick to the silica. SWIM will try this. He’ll dissolve the alkaloids in 1:1 of methanol and ethyl acetate, and then pass them through Whatman 1PS filter paper. This paper has silica gel on it, and so the polar alkaloids should stick to the paper and not pass through, just as they do in a column! SWIM is quite excited about this possibility.