112 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



curacy or expedition over the best of 

 those presently in use. At least, that is 

 the conclusion at which I arrived. 



As regards the extraction of opium 

 with water, my experience does not agree 

 with that of Endemann. It must have 

 been a very exceptional sample of opium 

 which yielded a considerable amount of 

 morphine to dilutt sulphuric acid, after 

 being practically exhausted with water. 

 Excess of acid may facilitate the exhaust- 

 ion, requiring less water lor total ex- 

 traction, but that is the most that can be 

 said. At all events, I have never met 

 with an opium which did not give an 

 acid reaction, and it would be very 

 strange if the morphine could not be ex- 

 tracted by water from such a drug. It 

 is difficult to state exactly the amount of 

 water required to exhaust a given weight 

 of opium, as it depends on the manner in 

 which the extraction is conducted, and 

 on the degree of accuracy desired in the 

 analysis. Less water is required if the 

 opium is exhausted by the pharmaceuti- 

 cal method of percolation than if treated 

 on an ordinary filter. As a rule I regard 

 the ID grms. of opium as exhausted 

 when the filtrate or percolate amounts to 

 1 20 c. c, the opium having been digested 

 with about 40 c. c. of water before perco- 

 lating. 



I append results of assay of a sample 

 of Turkey opium by each of the methods 

 referred to, the numbers representing the 

 percentage of morphine hydrate : 



As regards the purity of the precipitate 

 obtained in these processes, the first three 

 were practically pure morphine. A. in- 

 dicated 98 per cent, and B. 82 per cent. 

 It is not to be inferred that the relative 

 value of the methods is always exactly 

 as indicated above. The B.P, process is 



specially liable to give varying results, 

 and is generally relatively lower than 

 above. A process which gives a different 

 result, according as it has been con- 

 ducted on a cold day or a warm day, or 

 has been continued for 48 hours instead 

 of 24, is of limited value. It is a great 

 fallacy to attach value to a method be- 

 cause it gives concordant results in two 

 experiments conducted under identical 

 conditions. In practical working these 

 conditions cannot be attained. This 

 applies very truly to the morphinate of 

 lime and ammonium chloride process 

 presently official in the B.P. Quite re- 

 cently several chemists working indepen- 

 dently have obtained fairly concordant 

 results with the methods A. and B., but 

 considerable discrepancies with the meth- 

 od B. P. I agree with our American 

 friends that it is not a trustworthy pro- 

 cess, and that a process on the lines of 

 the U. S. P. is to be preferred. At the 

 same time I should prefer the method of 

 Teschemacher and Smith, or that de- 

 scribed as A., as representing more truly 

 the full morphine-content of the opium, 

 and giving nearly as pure a morphine 

 precipitate. Indeed, if it is permissable 

 to wash the variably impure morphine 

 with morphiated spirit on the assumption 

 that the precipitate loses no morphine or 

 always a constant slight amount (a prop- 

 osition which I doubt), then the T. and 

 S. process is perhaps as good a one as we 

 possess. I would only suggest the evap- 

 oration to a definite quantity, say seven 

 grams, instead of a "syrupy consistence," 

 and the addition of .05 grm. ammonium 

 oxalate before precipitating. The method 

 A. has the advantage that the morphine 

 is not exposed to the risk of washing 

 with morphiated alcohol, most of the im- 

 purities being got rid of by having the 

 morphine first in a spirituous and then in 

 an aqueous solution, and particularly by 

 neutralizing the latter. The question 



