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TINCTUEJE. 
Lyons, A. B., regrets that the tinctures of aconite root and of 
veratrum were made of “ uniform ” strength with that of other 
tinctures of potent drugs. Serious accidents are inevitable. We are 
committed to an official tincture so different from that to which 
physicians have become accustomed and which the majority of them 
will continue to use that the dispensing of either one in place of 
the other will jeopardize the welfare — possibly the life itself — of 
the patient. The 10 per cent tincture is per se much to be preferred 
to the 35 per cent one. It is interesting to note how arbitrarily 
changes in the strength of tinctures have been made in the direction 
of wholly unessential mathematical uniformity, regardless of the 
really important consideration of dose. Two mathematical con- 
siderations entered into the problem, viz, the percentage composition 
of the tincture and the dose. Of these the latter is quite as important 
as the former. If only one is to be retained, it should be the latter, 
so that the physician could learn once for all that the average dose 
of a tincture is a fluidrachm, or else that there are two classes of 
tinctures, the ordinary, with a dose of a fluidrachm, and the potent, 
dose one-fourth fluidrachm. This idea has been carried out in the Ph. 
Brit., IY, but it has been quite lost sight of in the present revision of 
the U. S. P. save that a vague distinction is made between potent (10 
per cent) and ordinary (20 per cent) tinctures. 
The tinctures of the U. S. P., VIII, are fairly satisfactory in 
mathematical uniformity, but how easily the whole class could be 
spared. One of the most important of all the tinctures, Tr. Iodi, 
although included in the international list of potent tinctures, has 
not been brought to the uniform 10 per cent standard, although, con- 
sidering the presence in it of potassium iodide, it is probably as 
“ strong ” as a 10 per cent tincture would be. — Proc. Am. Pliarm. Ass., 
1905, v. 53, p. 257. 
Katz, J., points out that the object of tinctures and extracts is to 
present the active ingredients of a crude drug in a stable, unchanged 
form and, whenever possible, quantitatively representing all of the 
active ingredients of the original. — Chem. Repert. Cothen, 1905, 
p. 200. 
Herzog, G., discusses the several methods for extracting drugs in 
the production of tinctures and extracts, and reports a series of 
experiments made with the apparatus designed by Bruns, evidently 
a pressure percolator. — Ber. d. pharm. Gesellsch., 1905, v. 15, p. 107. 
A symposium on the preparation of tinctures and extracts includes 
contributions by G. Arends, Berlin; W. Lenz, Berlin; W. Bruns, 
Elberfeld ; and J. Herzog, Berlin. — Ibid., pp. 124—159. 
