American Journal of Pharmacy (Volume 40)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1868 Excerpt: ... ployed as a test. The addition of acetic acid or of fatty oil is of course of easy recognition. The test of odor has been already mentioned. Of this criterion it is impossible to write, as it is an affair of much unprejudiced experience, --impossible without standard specimens for comparison, but with them often decisive. Dilution of the essential oil with an absolutely inodorous substance, as pure sugar of milk, affords a means for detecting more easily an after-smell (Biegeruch). One must also regard a certain sweetness which is quite foreign to the odor of geranium oil. Attar of rose is exported in bottles, f or when required in large quantities, in what are called euncumas, that is to say flat flasks of tinned copper, having a short and narrow neck. These vary in capacity from 1 to 10 pounds; they are sewed up in white cloth either at Kizanlik or, when necessary, at Constantinople, sealed, and provided with the Custom House ticket. Among the bottles must be mentioned the long, angular little The test here referred to depends on the solubility of a salt of rosaniline (as the oxalate which is known as Fuchsin) in alcohol and comparative insolubility in an essential oil. If an essential oil contains even so little as one per cent, of alcohol, the admixture, it is stated, will be detected by the pink color produced on shaking the oil, with a few particles of the rosaniline salt. I have tried the test on the oils of lemon, lavender, anise, nutmeg, carraway, juniper, peppermint and rosemary, and have found them to acquire only a faint pink color. The Ceylon grass-oil called Citronella became deep pink, as did the Turkish so-called Geranium Oil. Another grass-oil, that of Verbena, a sample of which, distilled by Mr. Fisher of Singapore, I regard as of indubitab..