CHERRY LAUREL WATER. 213 
medicinal practice; and as, on the other hand, we agree with 
M. Mialhe in condemning the latter, it remains for us to 
finish our undertaking and designate the substance that can 
be substituted for it advantageously. We propose, then, the 
active principle of this compound, that is the volatile oil of 
cherry laurel. This immediate product, always identical, is 
easily obtained and can be a long time preserved; it presents 
likewise the simple and easy means of obtaining a water of 
cherry laurel always uniform in composition, which can be 
renewed daily. The same proposition is applicable for the pre- 
paration of water of bitter almonds; it will obviate (if adopted) 
the equally numerous inconveniences, which this article pre- 
sents in its composition. 
To resume. I think with M. Mialhe, that the distilled 
water of cherry laurel is a medicine which ought, perhaps, to 
be rejected from the Materia Medica; but as it would be im- 
proper to deprive therapeutics of so powerful an agent, that 
it is necessary to replace it, not with the water of bitter 
almonds, but by the volatile oil of cherry laurel, in which 
resides its active principle. By an extension of the substitu- 
tion and by analogy, I propose the same modification, as 
regards the employment of distilled water of bitter almonds.* 
* We cannot approve either the substitution proposed by M. Mialhe, 
or that imagined by M. Faury, for the following reasons: — First, With 
regard to M. Mialhe; before substituting the water of bitter almonds for 
that of cherry laurel, it is necessary that there should be perfect identity 
of physiological action in both products, which, at the present day, has 
not been proved, or, as far as I know, even been tried. As to the reasons 
given by the same pharmaceutist, for rejecting the water of cherry laurel of 
the Materia Medica, we do not believe them to be well founded. If some 
manufacturers do not prepare this water in accordance with prescribed 
proportions, it is their fault and not that of the medicine, which should 
not be proscribed for a like cause. In the second place, the period when 
this preparation should be made is not arbitrary; it is that when the plant 
has attained its summum of growth, from the 15th of June to the 15th of 
August, and it even appears to us that the cherry laurel presents, in this 
respect, a much greater latitude than most plants of which divers phar- 
maceutical preparations are made but once annually. Finally, this, 
distilled water io hardly more subject to alterationy than others, when 
VOL. III. NO. III. 27 
