l62 
Deodorized  Opium  and  lincture.  { 
Am.  .Tour.  Pharm. 
April,  1902. 
Rother  about  half  of  the  morphine  contained  in  the  opium  was  lost 
to  the  finished  tincture.  In  the  December  number  of  the  same 
volume  Mr.  Rother  makes  a  reply  in  which  he  states  that  he 
believes  the  loss  of  morphine  to  be  due  to  a  fault  in  the  directions 
given  by  him  in  extracting  the  opium,  and  not  to  the  mixture  of 
fats  for  deodorizing. 
Next  in  order,  a  paper  was  contributed  to  the  Druggists'  Circular 
for  April,  1887,  by  C.  E.  Federer,  in  which  a  process  is  recom- 
mended for  preparing  deodorized  tincture  of  opium  by  exhausting 
the  opium  with  hot  water  and  reducing  the  temperature  of  the 
aqueous  solution  to  the  freezing  point.  This  has  the  serious  objec- 
tion that,  while  it  separates  the  resinous,  fatty  and  oily  matter  and 
narcotine,  it  also  throws  out  of  solution  a  large  per  cent,  of  the 
morphine. 
We  come  now  to  a  period  in  our  review  where  the  committee  on 
revision  of  the  United  States  Pharmacopoeia  takes  up  the  subject 
for  research  and  delegates  Prof.  E.  L.  Patch  to  investigate  the  sup- 
posed advantages  that  benzin  has  over  ether  in  the  removal  of 
mrcotine,  etc.  The  wording  of  the  instructions  for  the  inquiry  was 
unfortunate,  as  there  has  never  been  any  claim  made  by  those  who 
had  recommended  the  use  of  benzin  that  it  would  remove  the  nar- 
cotine, but  on  the  other  hand,  the  claim  was  that  benzin  would  not 
extract  the  morphine  or  the  narcotine,  and  that  ether  would  take 
out  some  of  the  former  and  nearly  all  of  the  latter  in  the  process  of 
preparing  deodorized  opium.  Professor  Patch,  following  the  in- 
struction, made  a  very  careful  investigation  of  the  subject  as  sub- 
mitted, and  reported  the  result  at  the  Baltimore  meeting  of  the 
American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  1898,  and  published  in  the 
proceedings,  Vol.  XLVI,  p.  373,  from  which  we  copy: 
"  Comparison. — Lots  of  100  grams  of  No.  40  opium,  assaying 
16  1  per  cent,  morphine,  washed  respectively  with  1,400  c.c.  of 
benzinum  and  ether  gave  the  following  results  : 
Weight  of  extracted  and  dried  opium  91*00  80*500 
Benzin. 
Ether. 
Weight  of  morphine  and  dried  opium 
Weight  of  morphine  lost  in  washing 
Weight  of  narcotine  lost  in  washing 
none 
15*05 
14-580 
•015 
4425 
"  Conclusion. — Benzinum,  or  petroleum  ether,  is  not  adapted  for 
use  in  washinp  narcotine,  etc.,  from  opium  in  making  deodorized 
