THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
MARCH,  i8qi. 
ON  THE  ASSAY  OF 
By  Wm.  T.  Hankey. 
Contribution  from  the  Chemical  Laboratory  of  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy. — 
No.  84. 
Read  at  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting  of  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy,  Feb.  17. 
It  was  observed  when  making  comparative  assays  of  powdered 
opium  by  the  U.  S.  P.  and  Squibb's  processes,  that  the  latter  always 
yielded  higher  results  to  the  extent  of  ^  to  2^  percent.  This 
difference  appeared  to  be  in  greater  part  due  to  the  presence  of 
calcium  meconate,  which  was  precipitated  in  the  latter  process  along 
with  the  morphine.  It  has  been  suggested  by  Charles  M.  Still  well1 
in  1886  to  dissolve  the  morphine  obtained  by  the  Squibb  process 
by  treatment  with  hot  absolute  alcohol,  weigh  the  insoluble  residue 
and  deduct  it  from  the  total  in  order  to  arrive  at  a  true  result.  This 
method  was  tried  in  a  number  of  instances,  but  was  found  to  require 
a  considerable  amount  of  time  as  well  as  absolute  alcohol. 
At  the  suggestion  of  Prof.  Trimble,  I  divided  a  sample  of  mor- 
phine obtained  by  the  Squibb  process  into  two  equal  portions. 
One  portion  was  ignited  to  constant  weight  and  the  ash  estimated. 
The  other  portion  was  washed  with  hot  absolute  alcohol,  the  insolu- 
ble residue  ignited  and  the  ash  found  to  weigh  the  same  as  that 
obtained  from  the  first  portion,  showing  that  the  absolute  alcohol 
extracted  nothing  that  would  yield  any  ash  on  ignition  :  this  was 
verified  by  igniting  a  portion  of  the  morphine  recovered  from  the 
absolute  alcohol. 
Another  sample  of  morphine  was  taken  which  had  been  obtained 
from  powdered  opium,  assaying  1575  per  cent,  by  the  Squibb  pro- 
American  Chemical  Journal,  vol.  8,  p.  295. 
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