f Ocro' 
On the Preparations of Opium. 125 
substance was considered as the active principle of opium, and 
it was supposed that those remedies of which opium was tBe 
basis, were possessed of remedial powers in proportion to the 
quantity of the crystalline substance contained in them : hence 
the great object became to preserve this in the extracts and 
even to render them more active, by separating all the resi- 
nous matter which accompanied the active principle. 
The method of the Batavian pharmacopoeia, which con- 
sisted in treating the opium with twice its weight of cold al- 
cohol, drying the residuum, dissolving it in water, and evapo- 
rating this solution; that of M. Limousin Lamothe, an 
excellent modification of the plan of Josse, and which ordered 
the opium to be beaten up with a certain quantity of rosin, 
boiled in water, and malixated, to separate the solution of 
opium from the resinous mass, were both intended to separate 
the resin of the opium, either by dissolving it in alcohol, or 
by combining it with the rosin. 
Finally, some years afterwards (1817) M. Robiquet, in 
endeavouring to perfect the method of Sertuerner, having 
proved, in contradiction to the opinion of the learned Ger- 
man pharmaceutist, that if the crystalline substance of Se- 
guin is a true organic salafiible base, existing in opium in- 
timately united with meconic acid ; the crystalline substance 
of Derosne is not a submeconate, but a distinct substance 
preexisting with the acid meconate; and, on the other hand, 
M. M. Orfila and Majendie, having demonstrated, that each 
of these two substances, the salt of Derosne (narcotine,) and 
the salt of Seguin (morphine,) had different physiological 
properties; it was perceived that it would be highly advan- 
tageous to be enabled to obtain opium deprived of one of 
these principles. The methods of Robiquet and Dublanc, 
founded on the property possessed by either of taking up the 
the narcotine from opium without attacking the acid meco- 
nate of morphine, were consequently proposed. 
Thus the volatile principles of opium, which were at first 
esteemed as the only medicinal portions of opium, afterwards 
only shared the esteem of physicians and pharmaceutists, and 
