Oxidation and degradation products of papaverine. Part I: Gadamer and Schulemann's papaverinol synthesis revisited.

In 1915 Gadamer published in this journal [1] a procedure for the synthesis of papaverinol 2 from papaverine 1 in excellent yield. However, he did not investigate the formation of a violet fluorescence produced upon crystallization of papaverinol 2 from ethanol. The compound responsible for this fluorescence was isolated and identified as the yet unknown quaternary ammonium ion 4, a 6a, 12a-diazadibenzo-[a, g]fluorenylium derivative. The isolation of 4 and its structure determination by spectroscopic methods are described. However, its formation mechanism is unknown.