658 
NEW PROCESS TOR MAKING FLUID EXTRACTS. 
mere copyist of others, but add something, during a lifetime, to the sum total of taste 
and improvement. 
It is surprising how the little elegances, and nice nothings, aid the business of the 
prosperous and enterprising pharmaceutist. 
Professional men are not given to business-promptness ; don’t let the title of profes¬ 
sional. , which is attached to our art, lead to any such careless habit as a want of prompt¬ 
ness in fulfilling any and every promise to do or promise to pay. 
So varying and peculiar are the auspices under which each young man enters busi¬ 
ness, that it is not likely that the foregoing covers all the ground designed for a reply to 
the query I accepted; these several points, however, may, if acted upon, be conducive 
to a proper estimate in the minds of some of the right paths to follow in acquiring a 
commercial education.— Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association , 1865. 
NOTE ON CARAMANIA GUM. 
ET WILLIAM PROCTER, JUN. 
Whilst engaged in the revision of the U. S. Dispensatory, Dr. Wood was presented by 
Mr. Benjamin R. Smith, of Philadelphia, with a sample of gum from a large invoice 
under the name of “ Caramania Gum.” No account of its origin could be given by Mr. 
Smith ; but there can be little doubt that it is the same gum described by Mr. S. H. 
Maltass (Pharm. Journ., vol. xv. p. 20), as one of the gums used habitually to adul¬ 
terate tragacantli. Mr. Maltass states that this gum is employed, to the extent of 50 
per cent., to adulterate the commoner varieties of tragacanth ; and to render the cheat 
less perceptible, is sometimes whitened by the addition of white-lead. Mr. Hanbury 
(ibid. p. 21), in a note, states that the Caramania gum appears identical with the 
“ Gomme pseudo-adragante” of M. Guibourt, regarded by that author as the product of 
Astragalus gummifer , Labill.; but it is referred by report, says Mr. Maltass, to the wild 
almond, a plum of Caramania. 
The “ Caramania gum” occurs in pieces, varying in size from a pea to a large chestnut, 
with a greater tendency to the spherical than tragacanth, though sometimes with a 
tendency to the contorted vermicular form, so common in tragacanth. Its colour varies 
from light to reddish-brown, more or less translucent, nearly tasteless, and slowly 
absorbing moisture when placed in water, swelling up to bulky, hydrated, jelly-like 
masses; whilst the intermediate spaces are filled with a mucilaginous solution of the 
more soluble part of the gum, but the soluble portion is evidently less abundant than in 
tragacanth. The mucilage is precipitated by subacetate of lead, but less decidedly than 
is arabin; oxalate of ammonia causes a white precipitate, not very abundant; alcohol 
does not instantaneously precipitate it in flakes like arabin, apparently because of a 
greater resistance of the mucilage to be penetrated by that liquid. It is not coagulated 
by borax, or sesquichloride of iron. The gelatinous insoluble part has but little cohe¬ 
sive power at first, but by standing, it softens and becomes more paste-like. When 
boiled with dilute sulphuric acid, it loses its jelly form and assumes a syrupy condition, 
being converted partially into soluble gum and partially into glucose, as indicated by 
Trommer’s test. A solution of oxide of copper in potassa instantly precipitates both 
this and the soluble gum as a bulky bluisli hydrate. Dr. Wood considers Caramania 
gum to have the same origin as the gum of Bassora, and that probably both are pro¬ 
duced in the province of Caramania, in Asia Minor—the latter entering commerce by 
the Persian Gulf, whilst the former comes to Smyrna, to be used as an adulterating 
agent.— American Journal of Pharmacy. 
NEW PROCESS FOR MAKING FLUID EXTRACTS. 
This invention relates to an improved process for producing that class of extracts 
which are made so that a certain amount of liquid shall represent, pound for pound, medi¬ 
cally, the same quantity of crude drug, and which are generally obtained by extracting 
with a large excess of liquid and evaporating down to the desired strength. The men¬ 
strua used for making extracts are usually of an ethereal or volatile nature, such as alcohol 
