NOTE  ON  PERSIAN  OPIUM. 
51 
and  glucose  which  they  contain  incline  him  to  assert  that  they 
are  not  natural  products,  but  opium^  to  which  some  narcotine 
and  the  pulp  of  apricots  have  been  added.  He  sees  no  objection 
to  the  use  of  Persian  opium  when  opium  is  prescribed  alone,  but 
believes  it  ought  not  to  be  substituted  in  the  preparation  of  ex- 
tract and  tincture,  because  of  the  smallness  of  the  residue  left. 
On  this  account  an  extract  prepared  with  Persian  opium  will  be 
less  rich  in  alkaloids  than  one  made  from  Smyrna  or  Constanti- 
nople opium,  even  though  these  latter  may  only  contain  6  per 
cent,  of  alkaloids. 
In  a  report  presented  to  the  Academy  of  Medicine  of  Brussels, 
M.  Victor  Pasquier  makes  the  following  observations  : — 
<'It  is  to  be  remarked  that  we  should  greatly  err  if  we  laid 
it  down  as  a  general  and  absolute  principle  that  an  opium  richer 
in  morphia  than  another  ought  always  to  be  preferred  to  the 
latter  for  all  pharmaceutical  preparations  of  which  it  may  form 
the  base ;  it  may  be,  on  the  contrary,  not  only  that  an  opium 
less  rich  in  morphia  ought  to  deserve  the  preference,  but  that 
one  more  strongly  charged  with  the  alkaloid  would  not  even 
serve  the  same  purpose." 
This  passage  is  made  clearer  by  the  following  note,  which  is 
quoted  from  the  Journal  de  Pharmacie  d'  Anvers,  April,  1860. 
Suppose,  for  example  : — 
An  opium  A  containing  morphia  .       .  4-50  per  cent. 
«     B       «  .       .  3.73 
The  opium  A  gives  an  ext.  containing  morphia  6*32 
a     B  »4  8-29 
"     A  gives  extract  weighing  .  68-00  " 
"     B  "  "  .  45.00  " 
From  which  it  appears  that  in  selecting  an  opium  for  some 
pharmaceutical  preparations  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  account 
not  only  the  proportion  of  morphia  contained  in  opium,  but  also 
the  solubility  of  the  various  principles  of  opium  in  the  different 
menstrua  with  which  we  act  on  it. 
In  the  estimation  of  morphia,  the  author  recommends  the  use 
of  chloroform  to  separate  the  narcotine,  and  then  cautions  the 
experimenter  against  reckoning  as  morphia  all  that  is  soluble  in 
alcohol  after  the  separation  of  the  morphia.  Without  this  pre- 
caution, he  adds  that  one  is  apt  to  estimate  as  morphia  what  is 
