LIQUOR OPII SEDATIVUS. 
395 
Dr. Attfield did not know whether they were quite agreed in what they 
wanted to obtain in liquor opii sedativus. If it were to be only the crystalline 
principles, then clearly the process which Mr. Wood had described would be the 
one they should adopt. If morphia was the only substance they were to keep 
their eye upon, and that would seem to be the case from the opinion of many 
therapeutists, as echoed by their Chairman that evening, then the logical con¬ 
clusion to come to was, that the sooner they did away with liquor opii sedativus 
the better. He would like to do Mr. Groves the justice to revert to one sentence 
that he had written in his paper, in connection with what their Chairman had 
said regarding the value of liquor opii as depending upon the amount of morphia 
it contained. Mr. Groves did say that, “as a matter of course, the finer the 
opium, the better the liquor.” Mr. Groves was not a man who was at all likely 
to lose sight of a point of that kind. 
Mr. Haselden said that in making liquor opii there was no doubt that they 
must begin with the crude opium, and then they must manipulate so as to get 
out of the opium what they wished to have in the solution. If they pounded 
and macerated the opium, the probability was they would not get out of it all 
they required. The opium should be well worked up with the hand into a 
paste, and this done three or four times before they evaporated the solution, 
and then worked up again a fifth time before they would get what they re¬ 
quired. To make good liquor opii the solution should be brought down to the 
consistency of a tolerably thick fluid. It should then be thrown into water, 
and redissolved and evaporated again ; and that should be done three or four 
times before they would really get such an extract as they ought to have for 
making liquor opii. There was a curious thing in regard to this extract; he 
had noticed it in making aqueous extract of aloes. Each time they eva¬ 
porated a clear solution, the extract, on being redissolved, left an insoluble resi¬ 
due. He thought, therefore, that in order to make good extract, it should be 
evaporated several times before it was employed for solution to make liquor opii 
sedativus. As regarded the quality of the opium, he suspected a good deal 
depended upon the nature of the soil as well as the clime from which it was 
imported. 
Dr. Redwood would like to say a word or two with reference to what Mr. 
Wood had said about the application of dialysis to extracting the active princi¬ 
ples from opium. As Mr. Wood had already stated, he (Dr. Redwood) did 
some years back make a great number of experiments with the view of ascer¬ 
taining how far dialysis might be found applicable for obtaining a class of 
preparations which he proposed introducing in medicine, but he confessed 
that, with the single exception of the case of opium, from which alone he got 
any tolerably good results, his experiments did not prove favourable. Aqueous 
solution in a very diluted state must be used, and he had always found that, 
with most substances operated upon, before time enough could be given for the 
diffusion to take place to the required extent, decomposition set up in the solu¬ 
tion. Where they used aqueous solution of vegetable substances, this generally 
occurred. One case in which he expected to get a satisfactory result was in 
the separation of the alkaloids from Cinchona bark, and there he entirely failed. 
He did not get any of the alkaloids to diffuse to an extent that would enable 
him to detect them by the ordinary tests; and, therefore, this method did not 
appear to be applicable to some of those cases where they would most desire to 
apply it, and altogether it involved difficulty. He should be sorry if, in stating 
this, he should at all discourage others from making further experiments in this 
direction. He had several times felt that probably he gave up the investigation 
rather too readily, and he had from time to time mentioned it to other persons 
with the view of inducing them to “renew it. He confessed that beyond the 
single case of operating with opium, in which he did get, as Mr. Wood had 
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