436  The  Opium  Assay  Method.  {Am.jour.pharm. 
September,  1894. 
liquid.  He  precipitated  the  morphine  from  solutions  weighing  five, 
six,  seven,  eight  and  ten  times  the  weight  of  the  opium  and  gets  his 
best  results  from  a  solution  of  eight  times  the  weight.  Thus  he 
prefers  a  solution  of  eighty  grams  for  precipitation,  while  this  writer 
(Squibb)  prefers  one  of  twenty  grams,  and  it  will  easily  be  seen  that 
the  presence  of  alcohol  in  these  two  solutions  will  have  a  very  dif- 
ferent bearing  upon  the  results." 
In  the  controversy  between  these  two  defenders  of  the  two 
methods  of  opium  assays  their  objects  should  not  be  lost  sight  of. 
Dr.  Squibb  aims  to  ascertain  as  near  as  possible  the  total  quantity 
of  morphine  in  the  opium  ;  to  accomplish  this  he  spares  neither  time 
nor  labor  in  the  extraction  of  the  opium,  and  does  not  object  to  the 
further  examination  of  his  morphine  for  purity  and,  in  fact,  as 
already  stated,  claims  that  it  is  necessary  to  correct  the  results  for 
matters  precipitated  which  are  not  morphine ;  his  claim  for  the 
method  is  that  the  assays  will  only  vary  within  0  2  to  0-3  per  cent. 
E.  Dieterich  aims  to  perfect  a  process  which  is  expeditious,  which 
will  yield  a  pure  morphine  not  requiring  a  subsequent  correction 
of  results,  which  will  give  results  agreeing  within  0-3  per  cent.,  and 
which  will  indicate  to  within  0-5  per  cent,  the  morphine  in  the  opium, 
which  is  claimed  to  be  sufficiently  accurate  for  pharmaceutical  pur- 
poses;  (this  apparently  is  the  extent  of  the  morphine  left  in  the 
mother-liquor  and  does  not  include  the  variable  source  of  error  due 
to  the  taking  of  an  aliquot  part  of  the  filtrate). 
In  the  American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,  1891,  p.  113,  was  pub- 
lished a  paper  by  Mr.  Wm.  T.  Hankey,  in  which  it  was  shown  that 
the  morphine  by  Squibb's  process  always  yielded  some  ash  upon 
ignition ;  the  ash  is  stated  to  be  calcium  oxide,  due  to  the  decom- 
position of  calcium  meconate,  and  the  factor  4-55  is  given  to  con- 
vert the  calcium  oxide  into  meconate,  which  then  is  to  be  subtracted 
from  the  weight  of  the  crude  morphine.  A  careful  reading  of  this 
paper  does  not  show  that  an  examination  of  the  ash  was  made,  but 
finding  that  the  ash  calculated  to  calcium  meconate  by  the  above 
factor  gave  an  almost  identical  figure  with  the  insoluble  residue  left 
upon  treating  the  crude  morphine  with  hot  absolute  alcohol  as 
directed  by  C.  M.  Stillwell  in  his  correction  of  results  by  Squibb's 
process,  and  which  residue  is  by  him  (Stillwell)  stated  to  be  calcium 
meconate,  it  was  an  easy  matter  to  forego  this  examination.  The 
corrections  to  be  made  according  to  this  paper  vary  from  0-59  to 
