ON ALCOHOLIC TINCTURES. 
n 
ART. IV.— AN ESSAY ON ALCOHOLIC TINCTURES* 
By M. Jaques Personne. 
We designate by the term alcoholic tinctures, solutions in 
alcohol of the principal medicinal principles contained in 
vegetables and animals. 
In these preparations, alcohol is almost always employed 
to hold in solution medicinal substances, and to preserve 
them from change. They are, therefore, medicines in which 
practitioners ought at all times to find the active principles, 
if not in the same state as they are met with in the vegeta- 
bles themselves, at least in a perfect state of preservation. 
The active principles that enter into the composition of 
tinctures are of a different nature, according to the sub- 
stances by which they are furnished ; some, as we know, 
are more soluble in concentrated alcohol, as the resins ; 
others are, on the contrary, more soluble in weak alcohol, 
or in water; as, for instance, the gum resins and extractive 
matter. From thence arises the necessity of employing 
alcohol of different degrees of strength to dissolve these sub- 
stances, regulated according to the medicinal principles the 
substances on which you operate contain. 
The various degrees of strength of the alcohol, intended 
for the preparation of tinctures, have been chosen in a 
manner purely theoretical. In fact, when analysis has 
shown that the active portion of a substance is soluble in 
concentrated alcohol, we prescribe alcohol of this descrip- 
tion in the preparation of the tincture ; on the contrary, if it 
* The importance of the information sought after in this essay was 
so well appreciated by the Societe de Pharmacie, that they offered their 
prize of 1000 francs for the best essay in answer to the queries they 
propounded. The above paper of M. Personne received the prize.— 
Ed. Jim. Joum. Pharm. 
