Extract

“ It is now, we believe, universally admitted, that mashing or making the extract, is a strictly chemical process; the more closely, then, we adhere to chemical rules, the better we are likely to succeed. ”

“ You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread, or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap. ”

“ To extract an oil or flavor is one of the nicest experiments of the laboratory, and one for which a chemist selects his materials with the greatest care, attends strictly to the cleanliness of his vessels, watches every change in temperature, and counts even seconds in time. ”

“ To separate, as the more volatile or soluble parts of a substance, by distillation or other chemical processes. In this sense extract is now more generally used.
AbÏstract¶, v. t. To perform the process of abstraction. [R.]
I own myself able to abstract in one sense. ”

“ This discovery of the French chemists may also lead to other very important results in the formation of extracts; but as it has only been pointed out to me by a friend since writing the foregoing pages, we are neither of us altogether prepared to give the results of any practical observations we have as yet made upon the subject. ”

“ So unreliable are a majority of the fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles found in the drug-stores, that we long since found it necessary to have prepared in our laboratory, most of those which we employ. ”

“ The extractive elements of flesh-meat are the products of regressive change, and are not necessary for the constitution and formation of the organs; nor can they, when taken with food, add to the substance of those organs. ”

“ Whether one is treating hide fleshings and pieces or whether one is dealing with raw or acidulated bones, the general principles of extraction are much the same, and most of this section is equally applicable to any class of material. ”

“ The remedies which we shall mention for domestic use are mostly vegetable. Infusions and decoctions of these will often be advised on account of the fact that they are more available than the tinctures, fluid extracts, and concentrated principles, which we prefer, and almost invariably employ in our practice. Most of these medical extracts are prepared in our chemical laboratory under the supervision of a careful and skilled pharmaceutist. ”

“ He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air, in raw inclement summers. ”

“ Of sensible substances there are two sorts: one of organized bodies, which are propagated by seed; and in these the SHAPE is that which to us is the leading quality, and most characteristical part, that determines the species. And therefore in vegetables and animals, an extended solid substance of such a certain figure usually serves the turn. ”

“ Having thus acquired a general idea of the sources of our raw materials, we must study more closely the substances themselves, and first of all we must investigate them as we should any other chemical substance, i.e. we must get to understand the nature and properties of the matter of which the vegetable fibres are composed. ”

“ For medicinal purposes, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, roots, bulbs, the expressed juice, and milky or resinous secretions of plants, etc.* [11] are obtained from the vegetable world. The skin, nails, wool, blood, flesh, fat, marrow, bones, are procured from the animal world. ”

“ We attain, therefore, our first generalized description of life as the property or peculiar quality of a substance composed of none but the more common elements, but of these elements grouped in various ways to form compounds ranging from proteid, the most complex of known substances to the simplest salts. The living substance, moreover, has its mixture of elaborate and simple compounds associated in a fashion that is peculiar. The older writers have spoken of protoplasm or the cell as being in a sense “manufactured articles” ”

“ I considered further how that in everything which arises, grows, lives or soars in the four elements named, be it metal, stone, herb or animal, the four natures of the elements, heat, cold, moistness and dryness are mingled. It is also to be noted that the four natures in question are also mixed and blended in the human body in a measure and temperament suitable to the life and nature of man. ”

“ And yet, with all this practical skill in decoction, and accumulative industry in observation and nomenclature, so far are our scientific men from arriving, by any decoctive process of their own knowledge, at general results useful to ordinary human creatures, that when I wish now to separate, for young scholars, in first massive arrangement of vegetable productions, the Substances of Plants from their Essences ”

“ It is evident that this internal, this essential and efficient principle can be no single thing, such ,as the body of the plant, the chemical change of its substance, or the circulation of its sap, and still less the effect of external influences, but rather all these together—a something in which all these inhere as their common cause, and which we characterize as a unity by the generic appellation life. ”

“ Moreover as it is with Vegetables, so likewise must you order your distillation of the Oil, Salt, and Spirit of Animals: Neither need you to proceed farther or otherwise. As for the Vertues of both Animals and Vegetables, the Physician ought to know them by their Signature, and not by the books of Writers, because the Signature doth shew us the Vertues of all things much clearer and righter than many Writers, who write many things meerly from hear say, whenas themselves do in truth know very little or nothing at all. ”

“ The nature of the different manures necessary for the various kinds of vegetables, the influence of light, the different temperatures, the nature and quality of moisture, the preservation of seeds, roots, and plants, are all founded upon chemical principles. ”

“ To determine the proportion of the several elements in the formation of a medicinal drug, and to describe the subsequent changes it undergoes in the living economy, presupposes some knowledge, on the part of the old Indian writers, of chemical analysis and the process of decomposition. ”

“ In possessing the properties for preparing stone, the juice of many plants and fruits, sugar, and most mucous materials of the vegetable and animal kingdom, such as white of egg, approach gum arabic more or less. ”

“ With increased knowledge, and with growth of professional acumen, the limits of this power are more clearly seen, and the solution of a metallic salt, or decoction of a herb is now withheld when at one time it would have been administered with the fullest confidence. ”

“ The force of truth, dependent upon observation, is irresistible. A great many substances have been discovered amongst organic bodies, composed of the same elements in the same relative proportions, and yet exhibiting physical and chemical properties perfectly distinct one from another. ”

“ Wherein you may easily think, if we have such variety of plants and living creatures more than you have in Europe, (for we know what you have,) the simples, drugs, and ingredients of medicines, must likewise be in so much the greater variety. We have them likewise of divers ages, and long fermentations. ”

“ Here, for instance, is the substance which is found everywhere, and everywhere the same—in the grass as in the egg, in your blood as in turnip-juice! And with this one sole substance which it has pleased the great Creator to throw broadcast into everything you eat, He has fashioned all the thousand portions of your frame, diverse and delicate as they are ”

“ To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself. The tongue, for instance, is, like all other parts of the animal frame, composed of gelatine, fibrine, and other products of the chemistry of digestion ”

“ As, for instance, when inquiry is made, from what beginnings, and by what method and by what process, gold or any other metal or stone is generated, from its first menstrua and rudiments up to the perfect mineral; or in like manner by what process herbs are generated, from the first concretion of juices in the ground or from seeds up to the formed plant, with all the successive motions and diverse and [p. 123] continued efforts of nature. So also in the inquiry concerning the process of development in the generation of animals, from coition to birth ”

“ But such whose study it is to make sweeter and more efficacious Waters, do take the water which came off in the distillation, and pour it upon more of the fresh herb, and do again distil it, and draw off the most pure part of the herb, and make their Water more efficacious, which way of preparing the Waters of Herbs, is good and profitable. ”

“ They hold that the mind is but a function84 or product of the brain, and cannot therefore consistently admit its separate action. But their fundamental tenet is unsound, even upon considering the analogies of matter alone.
What is meant by a product?—in what does production consist? Let us look for instances: a metal is produced from an ore; alcohol is produced from saccharine matter; the bones and sinews of an animal are produced from its food. ”

“ When any substance which does not reduce, lower, or injuriously affect its quality or strength, is added to a food or drug product, other than that necessary to its manufacture or refining, the label shall bear a statement to that effect. ”

“ In other words, the products of industry are constantly taking the place of those of Nature more and more. In all these cases, these instances of composition of odorous principles are among the finest triumphs of organic chemistry. The creative power of the chemist is ever widening its range. ”

“ The present manual of our native Herbal Simples seeks rather to justify their uses on the sound basis of accurate chemical analysis, and precise elementary research. Hitherto medicinal herbs have come down to us from early times as possessing only a traditional value, and as exercising merely empirical effects. ”

“ The definition of an equivalent of any substance in a composition made of several ingredients, for example, is, in accordance with our guide, any other substance having similar properties and producing substantially the same effect. ”

“ Concerning which you may see in the second part of the Furnaces, about the Liquor of Flints. This is that which we see and believe, viz. that by how much the more the contraries are contrary to each other, so much the greater product is there of Fruits. But because Fire and Water are naturally exceeding contrary to each other, therefore do they also produce the greater fruits, viz. Metals, which are greater than either the Vegetables or Animals are. ”

“ I know, however, that your candour will induce you not to expect any thing like a finished work upon a science as yet in its infancy; and I am sure you will receive with indulgence the first attempt made to illustrate it, in a distinct course of lectures.
"Agricultural Chemistry has for its objects all those changes in the arrangements of matter connected with the growth and nourishment of plants; the comparative values of their produce as food; the constitution of soils; and the manner in which lands are enriched by manure, or rendered fertile by the different processes of cultivation." ”

“ When a substance of a recognized quality commonly used in the preparation of a food or drug product is replaced by another substance not injurious or deleterious to health, the name of the substituted substance shall appear upon the label. ”

“ If we examine the extraordinary display of combination or composition of some of the elements—especially those that enter into the composition of organic substances—we shall find how few of these elements are essential for the production of life, and its maintenance; and we shall be surprised to find what force or power, and phenomena, they are capable of producing. ”

“ Chemistry, physics, botany, plant physiology, and bacteriology, all contribute increasingly to a full understanding of the inner processes of the growing plant, and indicate more and more clearly the exact relations that exist between the conditions of growth and the character and amount of the resulting product. ”

“ In making the imitation, the natural product is first analyzed, and the chemist, ascertaining the exact nature of its constituent parts, is able to combine them and thus nearly reproduce the original compound. ”

“ They always remain precisely equal. So, again, the component parts of a vegetable or animal substance do not lose their mechanical and chemical properties as separate agents, when, by a peculiar mode of juxtaposition, they, as an aggregate whole, acquire physiological or vital properties in addition. ”

“ The wondrously compound molecules of the tropics are evolved, oils, starches, sugars, spices, ethers, and alkaloids—magazines of stored-up vis viva—and, by the assimilation of these, physiological phenomena in sentient beings are carried on, accompanied by the mysteries of will and consciousness, and the still more unaccountable facts of succession and heredity, which mock, if material, all efforts at conception or comprehension of matter in its ultimate essence. ”

“ It is necessary for us to know what kind of matter is required as food for the plant, and where this is to be obtained, which we can learn only through such means as shall separate the elements of which plants are composed ”