EDITORIAL. 
187 
best exertions. The Communication at page 133 will be read with interest ; 
it is an indication that the subject is engaging attention. Our columns are 
open to all who desire to be heard, and we would invite our brethren at a 
distance to use them if they have aught to suggest or to enquire. 
Extracts Prepared in Vacuo. — "We have received a communication 
from the Messrs. Tilden, in reference to a paragraph in our notice of the 
Shaker establishment at New Lebanon, published in the January number 
of the Journal, calling in question the correctness of the statement. We 
are not disposed to throw our columns open to the controversy of rival 
manufacturers, yet as the statement involves to some extent the priority 
of application of an important improvement in the manufacture of extracts, 
we will publish so much of the communication as is necessary to set the 
claims of the authors in a clear position. 
To the Editor of the American Journal of Pharmacy 
Our attention has been called to the following extract from a communication 
to you by M. Fowler, of the Society of Shakers at New Lebanon. N.Y., pub- 
lished in your Journal of January 1852, page 90. 
"As not a member of our community had the least knowledge that medi- 
cal extracts had ever been manufactured in America by that process at the 
time our apparatus was built." 
The public are here explicitly informed that not a member of their com- 
munity had the least knowledge that medicinal extracts were prepared in 
vacuo in this country, at the lime the apparatus was built, to which they re- 
fer. Are we to infer that to them belongs the credit of being the first to 
employ it in this country % 
We owe it alike to yourself, and the public, to expose the mistatements 
of their article, as well as to ourselves, to place upon record, as a matter of 
history, the facts connected with the erection of the first vacuum apparatus 
in this country, for the manufacture of extracts upon an extensive scale. 
While engaged in the preparation of medicinal extracts in the ordinary mode, 
our attention was called by gentlemen of science to the general inertness of 
such preparations, which led to a thorough investigation of the subject, and 
a determination to commence their preparation in vacuo. We examined all 
the many plans and inventions in use for other similar arts, and late in the 
fall of 1847 matured the plan now in use by us; the ensuing winter and 
spring, (1848) was occupied in the erection of our manufactory; and the 
summer, in the erection of the apparatus and machinery ; the remainder in ex- 
periments: producing only a few hundred pounds. In the spring of 1849, we 
started our works into successful operation, and continued so until December, 
producing several thousand pounds of extracts. The apparatus not being of 
sufficient capacity, we made, during the winter of 18-19 — 50, additions in- 
creasing its capacity five-fold. In April of 1850 we started our works and 
continued in operation until the winter, when we again suspended operations 
for a month, to make further alterations in the apparatus; since that time our 
works have been in almost constant operation, making from that time nearly 
twenty thousand pounds of extracts. 
The [Shaker] family referred to is within about a mile of our manufactory at 
New Lebanon, situated uponahill overlooking it, and almost daily someof the 
family pass by. It was well known at New" Lebanon and in this city that 
the extracts we were preparing, and putting up in an entirely different style, 
