Galenicals extraction

Internally as expressed juice, tincture, extracts, and other galenical preparations. 

The Greek physician Galen (120-100 A.D.) made fashionable prescriptions which were a combination of ingredients (does this sound familiar ). He also concocted extracts called "galenicals". His mixtures represent some of the first recorded incidences of polypharmacy. The theories and experimentation of Galen influenced therapeutics for the next 1500 years. 

Presence of these ginsenosides is the chemical marker that characterize P. ginseng C.A. Meyer, as well as its extracts and galenic forms. By the 1970s at the ETH-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, we had developed new analytical technologies for the analysis of medicinal plants.4"6 We created HPLC analytical methods for the quantification of the ginsenosides contained in roots and finished products.7 9 Before then, various methods... 

Medicinal plants are used as either isolated pure active constituents or complex mixtures of various constituents such as infusions, tinctures, extracts, and galenical preparations. The most common methods are partitioning... 

Leaching or solid-liquid extraction are terms that describe the extraction of soluble constituents from a solid or semisolid by means of suitable solvents. The process, which is used whenever tea or coffee is made, is an important stage in the production of many fine chemicals found naturally in animal and vegetable tissue. Examples are found in the extraction of fixed oils from seeds, in the preparation of alkaloids, such as strychnine from Nux vomica beans or quinine from Cinchona bark and in the isolation of enzymes, such as rennin, and hormones, such as insulin, from animal sources. In the past, a wider importance attended the process because the products of simple extraction procedures, known as galenicals, formed the major part of the ingredients used to fulfill a doctor s prescription. 

Because of its ability to form complexes with many chemical substances (see Section 3.2.5) and its large surface area in the swollen state, normal crospovidone is a good filtration auxiliary. It is particularly useful for selectively binding polyphenols, e.g. tannins in the form of an insoluble complex. As in the clarification of beer and wine, this feature can be used in the preparation of galenical products, particularly tinctures, aqueous and alcoholic extracts and medical wines, to extend their long-term stability by preventing precipitation. 

The valepotriates are unstable and are unlikely to be present in finished products, especially those based on aqueous extracts. Similarly, baldrinals, the decomposition products of valepotriates, are generally not detected in valerian root preparations. The stability of valepotriate preparations is a galenical problem dragees are probably the best. 

Traag, W.A., van Leeuwen, M., van Galen, F.R. Harmsen, J. (1997) Development and limited validation of methods for pre-treatment and extraction for the determination of organic contaminants in solid matrices with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (in Dutch). RIKILT report 97.27, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 

Many anticancer drags are extracted from plants. Galen proposed the juice expressed from woody nightshade Solanum dulcamara) to treat tumours and warts, which has been demonstrated to exert anti-inflammatory properties. More than 1600 genera have been examined in recent decades. ... 

Documented effects Experiments showed that a galenic preparation of this species reduced hypotension (Khahnatov 1964). An alcoholic extract of the seeds increases the tonus of muscles responsible for intestinal contractions. This extract is also used as a laxative to treat constipation (Khodzhimatov 1989). 

---