PROPOSED  ECONOMY  OF  ALCOHOL  IN  PERCOLATION,  ETC.  109 
Besides  the  uses  which  will  suggest  themselves  to  the  pharma- 
ceutist, this  instrument  is  admirably  adapted  to  the  purposes  of 
the  photographer,  whose  baths  frequently  become  cloudy,  and 
occasion  long  delays  in  the  execution  of  his  orders. — Proc.  Am. 
Pharm.  Assoc.,  1865. 
PROPOSED  ECONOMY  OF  ALCOHOL  IN  PERCOLATION, 
AS  APPLIED  TO  THE  EXTRACTS  AND  FLUID  EXTRACTS 
OF  THE  PHARMACOPOEIA. 
By  Edward  R.  Squibb,  M.  D. 
The  increase  in  the  price  of  alcohol  since  the  'ast  revision  of 
the  U.  S.  Pharmacopoeia,  has  materially  interfered  with  the  use 
of  the  officinal  extracts  and  fluid  extracts,  by  the  greatly  in- 
creased cost  of  preparing  them,  and  unless  some  plan  can  be 
found  whereby  either  the  cost  or  the  quantity  of  alcohol  may  be 
reduced,  it  appears  probable  that  these  classes  of  convenient 
and  useful  preparations  will  be  disused  or  debased. 
The  class  of  fluid  extracts  just  coming  into  popular  use  has 
already  suffered  much,  both  in  the  way  of  disuse  and  debase- 
ment, and  so  little  uniformity  is  there  in  the  character  and 
effects  of  these  preparations,  as  put  forth  by  different  manu- 
facturers, that  it  is  far  more  difficult  than  ever  before  to  base 
any  conclusions  upon  their  therapeutic  application. 
In  the  case  of  the  solid  alcoholic  extracts,  the  cost  of  the 
alcohol  is  often  four  or  five  times  that  of  the  drug  extracted, 
and  not  unfrequently  amounts  to  two-thirds  of  the  whole  cost  of 
the  finished  preparation.  The  present  range  in  the  price  of 
alcohol  places  it  at  about  ten  times  its  former  cost,  with  the 
certainty  of  a  farther  rise  to  at  least  twelve  times.  Under  cir- 
cumstances somewhat  similar,  the  Government  of  Great  Britain 
has  been  for  some  years  past  engaged  in  well  directed  efforts  to 
reduce  the  price  of  alcohol  for  certain  uses  in  the  arts,  but  thus 
far  these  efforts  have  not  been  of  much  avail  to  pharmacy. 
It  therefore  appears  more  practically  useful  to  seek  for  an  . 
economy  in  the  quantity  to  be  used  in  effecting  the  purposes  of 
the  Pharmacopoeia ;  and  in  this  direction  the  present  writer  de- 
termined to  make  some  efforts  in  the  preparation  of  the  follow- 
ing paper.    This  undertaking  was  commenced  more  than  a  year 
