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Roxburgh herbarium specimen, 'Bhang. Hind.', India (by 1815)
Roxburgh s.n. is a herbarium accession of Cannabis sativa from the herbarium of William Roxburgh, from India. Two sheets carry the same slip, which names the plant and gives it the name Bhang, marked Hind. Meise Botanic Garden holds one as BR0000023200302 and the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo the other as O-V-2164529.
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Extract of Indian hemp
Extract of Indian hemp (Extractum Cannabis Indicae) is the alcoholic extract of the flowering tops of Indian hemp, made in British and American pharmacy from the mid-19th century. The British Pharmacopoeia of 1864 made it by macerating a pound of Indian hemp in four pints of rectified spirit for seven days, distilling off the spirit and evaporating the rest by a water bath. The extract was the base of the other official preparations: the British Pharmaceutical Codex of 1907 calls it "the basis of medicinal preparations of this drug, and from it the tincture is prepared".
The 1864 British Pharmacopoeia entered the drug as the flowering tops of the female plant, "from which the resin has not been removed", cultivated in India, and gave the extract and a tincture as its preparations. The fifth revision of the Pharmacopoeia of the United States (1870) changed the name of its extract from Extractum Cannabis, "Extract of Hemp", to Extractum Cannabis Indicae, "Extract of Indian Hemp". Its extract was made by percolating twelve troyounces of Indian hemp with alcohol and evaporating the tincture by a water bath. The same page gives an extract of American hemp, made from hemp grown in North America.
Peter Squire's Companion to the British Pharmacopoeia (1880) describes the extract as "Most intense green", made from one part of Indian hemp to five of rectified spirit, and notes that six parts of the hemp yield one of extract. The 1907 Codex warns that commercial extracts "vary considerably", that the extract deteriorates on keeping by slow oxidation and should be stored in small full jars, and that "the physiological action of different samples of the extract is very unequal, so much so that some physicians desire a specimen to be set aside for the use of one patient". …
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