The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [82]
Aside from those plants that require dehydration such as Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa) or Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa), and those that require a year or more of aging to develop their full therapeutic potential such as Cascara Sagrada (Rhamnus purshiana) and its relatives, the therapeutic potency of tinctures made from fresh “green” herbs and roots are thought of by some individuals to be stronger than those of dry plant equivalents. Even though I tend to prefer fresh plant preparations, I can’t hold to a generalization like that, but it is interesting that homeopathic mother tinctures of herbs are almost always made from the fresh plant, since the dry plant products provide less satisfactory potencies.
There are two fundamental processes for tincturing an herb: maceration and percolation. Maceration requires no expensive or unusual equipment or complex procedures, whereas percolation usually does. And of course each method has its pros and cons, but then all things being relative, what doesn’t? We will discuss the maceration method in this chapter and deal with percolation (and the pros and cons of each) in Chapter Thirteen.
There are two basic methods for making a tincture by maceration; one requires measurements, the other doesn’t. The first method we will discuss is simple and very effective. I will refer to it as the “folk method.” It requires no measuring and is good for general use. The fact there is no measuring of substances, however, makes it somewhat vague as to the resultant “tincture strength.” Tincture strength refers to the amount of herb that has been concentrated into a given measure of solution.
When one prepares a tincture that will be dispensed by others, it is important to state on the label the tincture strength of the preparation, so it can be dispensed in appropriate and accurate doses. In order to prepare these tinctures for professional use (or as required by the FDA for all tinctures sold in commerce), use the method I will refer to as the “weight to volume (w/v) method.” In this method the weight of the herb and the volume of the menstruum are measured and noted in order to produce a specific tincture strength.
The metric system of measure is most convenient for this purpose because it offers us a working 1 to 1 relationship between a weight of a solid material with a volume of a liquid. The avoirdupois system of weight and measure that we normally use in the U.S. doesn’t readily supply us this convenience.
Simply put, one cubic centimeter of water weighs one gram. For our practical purposes, we can allow that this holds true for all the liquids (water, alcohol, wine, vinegar, glycerin) we use to formulate our menstrua. This is a relationship we can access in our weight to volume (w/v) method of making tinctures. The relationship of plant material to menstruum is known as the weight (of herb) to volume (of menstruum) ratio of the tincture, or the tincture strength. The most commonly found tincture strengths used in commerce and in mainstream medicine are 1:5 and 1:10 for dry plant preparations and 1:2 for fresh plant preparations. There is a historical precedent for this phenomenon.
In September of 1902 in Brussels, Belgium, a “Conference Internationale pour l’Unification de la Formule des Medicaments Heroiques” was held. This gathering brought together delegates from nearly every “civilized” country. The purpose of this body was to formulate standards for potent remedies which would be adopted by the various pharmacopoeias of the world, and therefore secure the principal object of an international pharmacopoeia. The protocol agreed upon at this conference was adopted and made official in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia VIII (1906) and has remained as a standard. Conforming in principle to the standards recommended by the International Protocol adopted at Brussels in 1902, these are the ratios of