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Selected Articles. 
may exercise, but also as to the foreign matters they add to 
the extractive mass, do not permit us to establish that'analogy 
■between these two extracts that might have been supposed 
to exist. What we have said of the laudanum of Sydenham 
may be applicable to this extract, as the wine contains alco- 
hol, and acid and tanning matters in variable .proportions. 
But, as the codex has not prescribed the quantity of wine 
that is to be used, the extract may be different, all other cir- 
cumstances being the same, if different proportions of wine 
be employed. 
The extract by ether, according to the methods of M.M. 
Robiquet and Dublanc, jr., differ in a striking manner from 
the preceding ; for not only the ether employed separates the 
narcotine and fatty matter, of which the watery extracts 
always retain a portion, but also takes up the meconine which 
is also soluble in ether, which is not the case with the meco- 
nates of morphine and codeine or narceine. 
This extract, therefore, is widely different in its composi- 
tion, and doubtless also in its physiological properties, from 
the other extracts. 
To conclude, the preparations of opium spoken of cannot 
be considered as identical in their composition, either, be- 
cause the constituent principles of opium exist in them in dif- 
ferent proportions, or in different states. Hence their action 
on the system cannot be the same. 
But as the physiological effect which physicians wish to 
produce by their administration, are extremely various, there 
may be a real advantage in using one or other of them in 
certain cases, or vice versa. Thus, when the physiological 
effect is intended to be produced, it is better accomplished by 
the acid meconates of codeine and morphine, than by narco- 
tine, or even unfavourably modified by the presence of this 
latter substance ; the extract of M. M. Robiquet <and Dublanc 
being free from it, will be found preferable to the common 
watery extracts ; and in like circumstances the laudanum of 
Rousseau, prepared according to the original formula, will 
be better suited to the case than that prepared according to 
the reformed formula of Baume. Each of the above men.- 
