442 
Aromatic  Waters. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I  September,  1898. 
pared  with  the  pharmacopoeial  assay,  the  results  do  not  give  lower 
percentages,  but  in  some  cases  give  higher  percentages. 
Other  drug  assay  methods,  with  volumetric  estimation  of  the  al- 
kaloid as  periodide,  are  in  progress  of  investigation. 
So  much  of  this  article  as  relates  to  atropine  was  published  in 
substance  in  J.  Am.  Chem.  Soc.y  for  May,  1898,  and  the  portion  re- 
lating to  opium  assay  was  published  in  Phar.  Archives \  for  June, 
1898. 
AROMATIC  WATERS.1 
By  H.  V.  Arny. 
Of  the  aromatic  waters  of  the  Pharmacopoeia,  six  are  directed  to 
be  prepared  from  volatile  oil,  with  the  aid  of  inert  absorbent 
material,  with  the  hope  of  creating  greater  solubility  by  minute  sub- 
division of  the  oil. 
That  absorbent  material  is  best  adapted  to  this  purpose  has  been 
a  question  of  much  discussion  and  uncertainty,  and  accordingly  we 
see  it  changed  in  successive  Pharmacopoeias,  from  magnesium  car- 
bonate to  absorbent  cotton,  and  from  the  latter  to  precipitated  cal 
cium  phosphate,  which  is  the  absorbent  directed  by  the  present 
Pharmacopoeia.  Hearing  complaints  from  practical  pharmacists, 
that  the  waters  manufactured  by  the  process  of  1890  do  not  keep  so 
well  as  those  made  by  the  absorbent  cotton  process  of  1880 — that 
they  showed,  in  shorter  time,  the  presence  of  microscopical  organ- 
isms— the  writer  prepared  in  December,  1897,  the  six  waters  in 
question,  by  the  processes  of  the  two  Pharmacopoeias,  and  examined 
the  same  in  July,  1898,  seven  months  later. 
The  method  of  storing  the  samples  was  as  nearly  as  possible  that 
in  vogue  in  a  retail  pharmacy ;  the  waters  being  kept  in  100  c.c. 
bottles  filled  to  the  shoulder,  corked  and  capped  with  paper.  At 
the  same  time,  samples  of  each  were  placed  in  similar  100  c.c.  bot- 
tles and  stoppered  with  merely  a  plug  of  absorbent  cotton. 
After  seven  months'  rest,  each  sample  was  examined,  and  when- 
ever a  precipitate  had  occurred  (invariably  a  flocculent  one,  showing 
cellular  structure  under  the  microscope),  it  was  collected  on  a  tared 
filter  and  weighed,  after  being  kept  at  the  temperature  of  ioo°  for 
an  hour. 
1  Read  before  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association  at  the  Baltimore 
meeting,  September,  1898. 
