PHARMACEUTICAL NOTICES, ETC. 
319 
It may also be employed in making tinctures of the resins and 
balsams, especially of the soft ones, tinctures of assafetida, tolu, 
compound benzoin, &c, &c, may be easily prepared in this way, 
using a wide mouthed bottle, and securing the bag to the cork by 
means of twine or wire. It is the most satisfactory method of 
preparing paregoric — the solids are placed in the bag and sus- 
pended in the mixed liquids contained in a bottle — for this purpose 
the opium should be in coarse powder. 
To prepare laudanum, as well as many other preparations, where 
ordinary displacement is inconvenient or troublesome, the follow- 
ing plan is pursued : — say one gallon of laudanum is wanted, I take 
10 oz. (Troy) of coarsely powdered opium, and having introduced 
half a gallon of diluted alcohol into a specie jar, suspend it just 
below the surface for twelve hours, it is then carefully packed in a 
percolator, covered with sand, and the half gallon of liquid from 
the jar is made to percolate through ; diluted alcohol is next added 
until the filtered liquid measures one gallon. As thus prepared, 
laudanum (if good opium be used,) is of full strength ; the last por- 
tions of liquid that come through have hardly any color and pos- 
sess but very little taste. One gallon of laudanum may in this 
manner be prepared in twenty-four hours, and is more nearly per- 
fect than that afforded by any other process with which I am 
acquainted. 
To prepare wine of colchicum seeds, the latter are macerated 
for twenty-four hours in wine, they are next bruised thoroughly 
and treated as in making laudanum. But it is unnecessary to mul- 
tiply examples, one of the above mentioned methods will be found 
applicable in almost, if not every case, where simple displacement 
cannot be conveniently employed. The advantages they offer over 
maceration are too obvious to require further recommendation, and 
I will only express the hope that pharmaceutists will more gene- 
rally avail themselves of such simple and easy methods of extract- 
ing the medicinal properties of such drugs as they will answer 
for. 
