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VINEGAR

I am referring here to the use of apple cider vinegar or any other plant vinegar such as plum vinegar, rice vinegar, wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, etc.

Vinegar is a sour liquid on account of its acetic acid content. It has valuable properties as a solvent as well as a preservative. As a solvent it provides a service that aids in the fixing and extraction of certain alkaloids and other water-soluble plant components, and it can be substituted for alcohol in the preparation of extracts, although this is not a common practice today. Medicinal vinegars await their renaissance in practical lay Herbalism, and it is intended that this particular manual will hasten that coming.

Vinegar’s action as a preservative is considered to be excellent, though inferior to dilute alcohol, and for this reason pure vinegar preparations are said to be more liable to change than tinctures. In certain custom-prepared menstrua, vinegar is commonly added as 5 percent to 10 percent of an alcohol-based menstruum to adjust the pH when that is advantageous (i.e., for making extracts of Lobelia, Black Walnut, Goldenseal, Ephedra, etc.)

In the late 1800s medicine-makers felt that the state of solution of some plant components was at its best when vinegar was employed as the menstruum, at least as far as the medicinal action of these extracted components was concerned. This was particularly the case when the activity of the medicine depended on the presence of one or more alkaloids. A raw free-base alkaloid is often difficult to bring into solution, but by uniting it with the acetic acid of vinegar a free base alkaloid forms an alkaloidal salt. Alkaloid salts are readily soluble in water; therefore, they may be more perfectly extracted in vinegar than by other menstrua.

However, the fact that vinegar contains inherent vegetable matter renders it liable to decomposition, and therefore these preparations are best made in small quantities and renewed at shorter intervals (annually) than alcohol-containing preparations. One can always, if desired, add a little alcohol to vinegar solutions to extend their preservation even further; this generates a medicine that is well preserved, and still greatly reduces the use of alcohol.

In chemistry, vinegar is generally classed among the derivatives of alcohol, as it is produced by the oxidation of alcoholic liquids, especially hard apple cider and wine. Vinegar is a very dilute solution of acetic acid containing what the pharmaceutical texts refer to as foreign matters. Why these matters are considered foreign I’m not quite sure, since they are inherent to and an actual part of what makes up whole vinegar itself. In the late 1800s the U.S. Pharmacopoeia’s official description of vinegar is the same as mine. The Pharmacopoeia defined vinegar as “impure diluted acetic acid prepared by fermentation.” A clue emerges as to the “foreign” mystery as it becomes clear that pharmaceutical activists focus solely on the action of the acetic acid in vinegar and not on the wholeness of vinegar itself; obviously, they are not at all impressed with or care about the fact that this wholeness gives vinegar its own inherent nutritional and medicinal virtues. Over time, vinegar fell into disfavor by pharmacists because not only was its acetic acid content found to be too variable, it was also relatively expensive and was said to be possessed by organic impurities (foreigners). Pharmacy eventually replaced vinegar with a much cheaper, more controllable product called acetic acid, nearly pure acetic acid prepared from wood by destructive fermentation and purification. Pure acetic acid is cheap, free from impurities, and unvarying in its intensity. In high pharmacy it is diluted to present a 6 percent acetic acid content (actually, 5.7 to 6.3 are allowable parameters—I guess even perfection has its slack side).

In light of all this, however, I think that the obsession with an acetic acid content that is exactly 6 percent (+ or−.3 percent) is a bit anal,