Pills No. 2.—Take 5 grammes of the recently powdered fruit of the cicuta; incorporate them with a sufficient quantity of gum and sugar; divide as before into 100 pills, which are to be enveloped with sugar, each pill will weigh about 25 centigrammes.
“We will finish the series of internal medicines by the formula of a syrup of conicine, which will be of the greatest utility to practitioners.
“Exhaust 10 grammes of the fruit of the cicuta, with alcohol at 28° C. (82 F.) so as to obtain 60 grammes, to which 3000 grammes of syrup, aromatised, ad libitum, are to be added.
“Thirty grammes of this syrup represent 1 decigramme of the fruit or a milligramme of conicine. A teaspoonful being the equivalent of 30 grammes of syrup, the patient who takes one pill of No. 2. will be able to take half a teaspoonful of the syrup.
FORMULA FOR EXTERNAL USE.—Balm of Conicine.—The process which we employ to prepare the balm of conicine authorizes us to give it that name. It is in effect, a true solution in lard freed from the principles which retain it in combination, and as pure as the processes we have proposed for its extraction will permit. Thus, after having exhausted the fruit by alcohol, and after having separated as completely as possible the conicine by means of ether and caustic potash, confining ourselves to the precautions indicated below, we take: the ether of cicuta, obtained by the exhaustion of 100 grammes of the fruit, and 300 grammes of recently washed lard. We begin by evaporating the ether in the open air, that is, by pouring it little by little in a plate, and as soon as the greater part of it has been eliminated, and the conicine commences to appear upon the plate in the form of little yellow drops, separating themselves from the vehicle, the lard is to be incorporated with it by degrees, the whole being constantly stirred to facilitate the evaporation of the ether. A balm of conicine is thus obtained, exceedingly active and convenient for use. {303}
The following is the mode of preparing the ether of cicuta: “The alcoholic tincture obtained by the complete exhaustion of 100 grammes of the fruit, is to be evaporated to the consistence of a syrup, and the alcohol is to be replaced by a small quantity of water. This leaves undissolved a thick green oil, entirely soluble in ether, and of which the quantity reaches the weight of 30 grammes. After having separated this green oil, we wash with ether the product of the alcoholic evaporation and obtain a yellowish resinous substance, which has no action on litmus paper and which has a strong odor, sui generis, different from that of conicine.
After having submitted the mother waters of the alcoholic extract to this preliminary treatment, we have introduced them into a flask having a capacity three times as great as their volume, and treated them successively with a concentrated solution of caustic potash and rectified sulphuric ether. Immediately after the addition of the potash, a well marked odor of conicine was manifest in the mixture, and the ether became strongly alkaline. We left the same ether, (about 20 grammes) upon the mixture for twelve hours, often agitating it. It was then decanted and replaced by fresh ether, and this was replaced until the ether became nearly insensible to litmus paper. We remarked that the first 20 grammes of ether took up nearly all the alkaloid. One hundred grammes of well rectified ether was sufficient to remove almost completely the alkaloid from the extractive and alkaline mixture derived from 100 grammes of the fruit of the cicuta.
| Tincture of the fruit, | 100 grammes. |
| Lime water, | 900 grammes. |
Filter at the end of a few minutes.
“In this preparation we have thought best to employ lime water instead of simple water. We have remarked previously that the tincture of cicuta possessed no smell of conicine, but when lime water was added, the odor was instantly developed in a high dagree. The conicine is disengaged by the lime {304} from its saline combination, and remains free, dissolved in the water.”