AM.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
Dee.  1, 1874.  S 
Process  of  Percolation. 
553 
manufacture  of  fluid  extracts,  I  consider  an  attempt  to  economize 
menstruum,  at  the  risk  of  sacrificing  the  reliability  and  uniform 
strength  of  one  of  the  most  important  class  of  our  medicinal  agents. 
The  old  direction,  "  Continue  the  percolation  until  the  drug  is  ex- 
hausted," should  never  have  been  abandoned,  but  should  have  been 
adhered  to  as  a  maxim  in  all  processes  of  percolation,  in  making  all 
medicinal  extracts,  either  fluid  or  solid,  no  matter  what  it  costs.  This 
would  insure  the  thorough  exhaustion  of  the  substance.  Then  the 
pharmacist  who  best  understands  his  business,  and  is  most  skilled  in 
the  process,  could  make  his  preparations  the  cheapest,  and  thus  reap 
the  benefits  of  his  knowledge  and  experience  in  his  economy  in  the 
use  of  menstruum — an  additional  stimulus  to  the  acquisition  of  a  more 
perfect  knowledge  of  the  process. 
If  the  Committee  had  sufficient  faith  in  their  new-fangled  plan  for 
making  fluid  extracts,  why  did  they  not  adopt  it  as  a  means  of  econ- 
omy in  the  preparation  of  the  solid  extracts  also  ?  I  cannot  see  why 
it  is  not  as  equally  applicable  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  There 
is  no  part  of  the  Committee's  labors  of  which  I  so  wholly  disapprove 
as  this. 
Admitting,  for  instance,  that  the  new  process  would  yield  reliable 
fluid  extracts,  I  believe  there  are  few  pharmacists  but  would  feel  loth, 
for  all  that  could  be  saved  by  such  an  economical  process,  to  have  a 
lot  of  percolators,  with  their  contents,  sitting  about  in  their  stores  or 
laboratories  for  five  or  six  days  at  a  time,  with  the  liability  of  their 
being  capsized ;  and  the  process  cannot  be  conducted  so  well  in  the 
cellar,  unless  in  warm  weather,  owing  to  the  lower  temperature  dimin- 
ishing the  solvent  power  of  the  menstruum. 
The  amount  of  alcohol  saved,  to  the  majority  of  pharmacists,  in  all 
the  operations  in  making  fluid  extracts  for  their  own  use,  would  be 
but  a  mite,  a  thing  too  trifling  to  be  considered  in  comparison  with 
the  importance  of  having  good  and  reliable  preparations,  as,  by 
proper  management  in  all  large,  or  even  in  the  smaller  operations, 
especially  when  a  strongly  alcoholic  menstruum  is  used,  much  of  the 
alcohol  may  be  recovered  by  the  use  of  the  still. 
Furthermore,  I  cannot  see  the  necessity  for  so  prolonged  a  mace- 
ration as  is  directed  in  the  officinal  process.  I  have  paid  some  atten- 
tion to  the  matter,  in  a  multiplicity  of  operations,  with  a  view  to  test 
this  very  point,  and  I  never  could  perceive  any  advantage  in  extend- 
ing the  preliminary  maceration  beyond  twenty-four  to  thirty-six  hours, 
