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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
by the contact of concentrated nitric acid, that it took no 
longer a red color, and did not become blue by trituration 
with the persalts of iron, I could then proportion the pure and 
perfectly crystallized narcotine. 
Lastly, to terminate all that concerns opium, I will observe 
that the extracts sold in commerce are mostly of bad quality, 
and badly prepared. Some of them are made by digestion in 
boiling water, and contain considerable quantities of resinous 
matter: others, and these are more general, are made with 
the opium of Alexandria, which several very conscientious 
apothecaries, deceived by its appearance, have always con- 
sidered as good opium. One may judge of its great import- 
ance, and the care that is required, whether in the choice of 
opium intended to make an extract, or in the preparation 
of the extract itself, by relating here what happened to 
one of our colleagues, who had prepared, with the Alexandria 
kind, some extract, almost inert compared with what he had 
been in the habit of furnishing, and which, up to that time, he 
had always prepared with Smyrna opium. The person who 
made use of it, in large doses, (100 grains per day,) made 
some reproaches, and asked him if \he had not given him a 
stale preparation. What then might have been these reproaches, 
had he been served, which might have been done in good 
faith, with the false opium here signalized? This anecdote, 
which we have from an undoubted source, with all the facts 
contained in this notice, ought then to put all pharmaceutists 
upon their guard against the fraud and avidity introduced 
into the commerce of opium, one of the most important sub- 
jects of our Materia Medica. 
