The syrup of ginger is sometimes of use as a warm vehicle for giving medicines to persons afflicted with flatulency. It may be made by infusing two ounces of bruised ginger in two pints of boiling water for twenty-four hours. After the liquor has been strained, and has stood to settle for some time, it may be poured off, and a little more than double its weight of fine powdered sugar dissolved in it.
TINCTURES, ELIXIRS, &c.
Rectified spirit is the direct menstruum of the resins and essential oils of vegetables, and totally extracts these active principles from sundry substances, which yield them to water, either not at all, or only in part.
It dissolves likewise those parts of animal substances in which their peculiar smells and tastes reside. Hence the tinctures prepared with rectified spirits form an useful and elegant class of medicines, possessing many of the most essential virtues of simples, without being clogged with their inert or useless parts.
Water, however, being the proper menstruum of the gummy, saline, and saccharine parts of medicinal substances, it will be necessary, in the preparation of several tinctures, to make use of a weak spirit, or a composition of rectified spirit and water.
Aromatic Tincture.
Infuse two ounces of Jamaica pepper in two pints of brandy, without heat, for a few days; then strain off the tincture.
This simple tincture will sufficiently answer all the intentions of the more costly preparations of this kind. It is rather too hot to be taken by itself; but is very proper for mixing with such medicines as might otherwise prove too cold for the stomach.
Compound Tincture of the Bark.
Take of Peruvian bark, two ounces; Seville orange-peel and cinnamon, of each half an ounce. Let the bark be powdered, and the other ingredients bruised; then infuse the whole in a pint and a half of brandy, for five or six days, in a close vessel; afterwards strain off the tincture.