A New Supplement...: Carmine.

A New Supplement to the latest Pharmacopoeias of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris, Forming A Complete Dispendatory, Conspectus, and Dictionary of Medical Chemistry, Giving All the Old and New Names, Including the New French and American Medicines, and Poisons; with Symptoms, Treatment, and Tests; as Well As Herbs, Drugs, Compounds, Veterinary Drugs, With the Pharmacopoia of the Vetenary College, Nostrums, Patent Medicines, Perfumery, Paints, Varnishes, And similar articles kept in the Shops; With Their Compositions, Imitations, Adulterations, And Medicinal Uses, Being a General Book of Formulæ and Recipes For Daily Reference in the Laboratory and at the Counter.
Fourth edition, corrected, improved, and very much enlarged.
By James Rennie, M. A., Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Foreign Medicine; the Pharmacopeia Universalis; Author of a Conspectus of Prescriptions in Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery; the Pharmacopeia Imperialis, &c. &c.
London: Baldwin and Cradock. 1837.
London: Thomas Curson Hansard, Paternoster Row.


CARMINE. An exquisite red prepared from cochineal by several processes, some of them kept secret. Pour two quarts of distilled water into a copper pan, and when boiling add z3ij of the best grain cochnieal finely ground and sifted; boil it for six minutes, carefully stirring it the while. Then add 60 grains of fine Roman alum in powder, and boil three minutes longer, when it is set to cool; but while yeat a little warm decant the clear liquor, and strain through silk into porcelain dishes, and in four days decant and filter again into other dishes. The precipitate which has fallen down is then to be dried carefully in the shade, as it forms the finest carmine. The second deposition will not be so good. Adulterated with vermilion and red lead; but its merits may be known by its dissolving wholly in ammonia, and forming a deep pink colour. The finest is the lightest, and a good test is the filling of a very small thimble with the specimens, and weighing them comparatively.