36 
Maceration  and  Percolation. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\    January,  1910. 
384-322  B.C.,  the  celebrated  Greek  philosopher  and  founder  of  the 
peripatetic  school,  already  described  this  process  of  obtaining  crude 
potash.  According  to  the  plants  used  the  resulting  salt — Sal  lixiv- 
ius — was  named  as  Sal  absinthii,  Sal  cardui  benedicti,  etc.  Lixivia- 
tion  or  leeching  ( German- Auslaugen)  has  been  extensively  prac- 
ticed in  various  technical  industries  ever  since.  Even  to-day  the 
new  Spanish  and  French  pharmacopoeias  give  the  percolation  process 
the  name  lixiviation  and  the  French  Codex  devotes  two  and  a  half 
pages  (383-385)  under  the  title  "Lixiviation." 
In  1746  Comte  Claude-Toussaint-Murot  de  la  Garaye  (1675- 
1755)  published  a  work  in  Paris:  "  Chymie  hydraulique  pour  ex- 
traire  les  sels  des  vegetaux,  animaux  et  mineraux  par  moyen  de 
l'eau  pure/'  in  which  he  advocated  and  described  the  extraction  of 
powdered  vegetable  drugs,  etc.,  with  water.  "  Sel "  was  not  merely 
the  name  for  a  chemical  salt  but  also,  for  an  extract  or  active  prin- 
ciple, as  can  be  seen  by  the  old  synonym  "  Sal  essentiale  tartari " 
which  stands  for  tartaric  acid.  One  of  the  products  of  the  chemical 
and  pharmacological  studies  and  researches  of  this  French  physician 
and  philanthropist  was  the  preparation  of  the  so-called  "  Sal  essen- 
tiale de  la  Garaye/'  which  was  a  dry  cinchona  extract.4  But  already 
in  1672  the  German  "  Chymicus,"  Joel  Langelot  or,  as  it  was  custo- 
mary those  days,  Latinized  to  'f  Langelottius,"  the  alchemist  and 
Court  physician  to  the  Duke  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  recommended 
the  very  same  method  and  also  constructed  a  "  philosophical  mill  " 
described  by  Joh.  Christ  Wiegleb,  Geschichte  des  Wachstums  und 
der  Erfindungen  in  der  Chemie  (Berlin  and  Stettin,  1791-1792). 
This  is  by  rights  the  forerunner  of  the  method  of  displacement. 
Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  of  Rumford,  a  born  American  (at 
Rumford  now  Concord,  N.  H.),  who  deserves  special  credit  for 
being  the  first  to  ascertain  that  liquids  can  be  boiled  by  means  of 
steam,  used  a  method  of  preparing  coffee,  resembling  our  present 
percolation,  which  he  described  in  his  18th  essay  in  Repertory  of 
Arts,  April  and  May,  1813. 
In  18 1 7  C.  Johnson  applied  this  principle  to  the  extraction  of 
cinchona  bark  in  England,  saying :  "  The  machine  I  use  is  similar 
to  the  one  made  several  years  ago  by  Edmund  Loyd  &  Co.,  178 
Strand,  London,  and  does  not  differ  essentially  from  any  of  those 
described  by  Count  Rumford.  In  the  Lancaster  public  dispensary 
this  method  is  found  to  yield  a  better  preparation  than  was  formerly 
obtained  from  twice  the  quantity  of  cinchona  bark "  (Annals  of 
Philosophy,  ix,  .p.  451). 
