Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
Dec.  1,  1874.  J 
Process  of  Percolation. 
555 
mit  loss  of  vapor.  When  preliminary  maceration  is  conducted  in 
bottles,  there  is  no  difficulty  attending  the  process  at  any  tempera- 
ture. 
In  operating  by  the  officinal  process  I  have,  on  several  occasions, 
experienced  trouble  in  consequence  of  loss  of  menstruum  during 
maceration,  and  the  consequent  disarrangement  of  the  mass  in  the 
percolator. 
The  officinal  formulae  for  fluid  extracts  limit  the  percolate  to  twenty- 
four  fluidounces,  just  one-half,  or  even  less  than  one-half  the  quantity 
that  was  employed  in  the  late  Pharmacopoeia,  to  exhaust  sixteen 
troyounces  of  drug ;  and  the  four  days'  soaking  of  the  drug  in  that 
small  portion  of  the  menstruum  which  can  find  room  in  contact  with 
the  particles  of  the  powder  are  supposed  to  compensate  for  the 
action  of  the  other  pint  and  a  half  of  menstruum  that  was  formerly 
considered  necessary  to  exhaust  the  substance. 
This  plan,  in  part,  is  based  upon  the  supposition  that  the  first  pint 
of  percolate  obtained  from  sixteen  troyounces  of  a  drug,  in  making 
a  fluid  extract,  if  the  process  has  been  well  managed,  contains  about 
four-fifths  of  the  entire  soluble,  active  properties  of  the  substance 
under  treatment.  But,  if  the  process  should  not  be  well  managed, 
then  what  will  be  the  condition  of  things,  and  what  the  result  ?  What 
the  solution  to  this  problem  is,  will,  in  many  cases,  be  hard  to  say, 
and  I  will  only  leave  it  to  the  intelligent  and  conscientious  pharmacist 
to  conjecture.  And,  pray  tell  me,  also,  how  often  will  the  process  be 
well  managed  in  the  hands  of  the  majority  of  those  who  will  under- 
take the  apparently  simple  process  ? 
When  I  am  percolating  a  substance  in  making  a  fluid  extract,  and 
when,  after  I  have  secured  the  prescribed  quantity  of  percolate,  I 
still  find  the  fluid  dropping  from  the  percolator  quite  highly  colored, 
and  with  the  characteristic  taste  and  odor  of  the  drug  strongly 
marked — as  has  been  my  experience  over  and  over  again  in  working 
the  officinal  processes — I  can  never  rest  satisfied,  nor  can  I  conscien- 
tiously allow  myself  to  stop  here,  I  feel,  if  I  did,  as  though  my  finished 
extract  will  be  deficient  in  strength,  or  at  least  of  very  indefinite 
composition.  Yet,  it  may  be  said  that  the  drug  is  practically  ex- 
hausted of  all  that  is  really  medicinal.  This  may  be  so,  but  appear- 
ances are  against  such  a  supposition  or  inference,  and  I  cannot,  under 
such  circumstances,  but  be  dissatisfied  with  such  results,  and  for  the 
sake  of  calming  my  fears  and  satisfying  my  ambition,  I  always  feel 
