Plant Tinctures

There are several methods for the preparation of plant tinctures but the more current is the alcoholic maceration.

The medicinal plant tinctures are macerated in a liquid, generally ethyl alcohol (spirit of wine) at 60%.

There is some that prefers to make the tinctures with dry plants in warm temperature in appropriate apparel called Soxhlet, which allows obtaining the tinctures in some hours. Whenever it is possible, we preferred to prepare them at cold temperature, in alcoholic maceration, using fresh plants picked at a certain occasion, since they have more virtue.

Under maceration, the medium proportion between the dry plants and the liquid is, generally, of 1:5, that is to say, in order to prepare 1000 ml of tincture; it is necessary to have 200 g of dry plants.

Pick, at a suitable season, of the plants that you choose either the roots flowers or fruits, as per what is indicated for each case, and that you want to do the tincture with.

If you take the roots, wash them very well with water and dry them with a very clean cotton cloth.

Cut the plants in pieces or mill them in a kitchen electrical machine. Consecutively, pour them in a glass flask, with a large mouth and with the capacity of 1 litre.

The plants should not surpass 3/4 of the height of the flask. Pave them lightly. Pour in the spirit of wine, well rectified to 60%, so that the spirit is 4 or 5 cm above the level of the plant materiel.

Close the flask well and let to macerate for 10 days. If you don't need soon of the tincture, let to macerate 20 or 30 days. As the fresh plants contain water, the graduation of the spirit will devaluate slightly. It would be preferable, that the spirit of wine has more than 60%.

Once this period of time has passed, prepare for decantation and pour the tincture in another flask of the same size. After having drained the whole liquid, remove the plants soaked in spirit of wine and place them in a clean cotton cloth. Squeeze very well the tincture that still remains in the plants over a wide recipient, so that the plants have release almost all of their tincture.

Pour this tincture over the other. Now, place in the first flask a glass or plastic funnel, with cotton to filter. Pour little by little, the tincture in the funnel. Close well the flask that contains the tincture. Remove the residues that were in the cotton of the funnel and join it to the plants.

Dry them in the sun. When they are very dry, put them in an iron frying pan and incinerate them. This operation should be made in the out doors since a great amount of smoke is exhales from the incineration.

Pick up the ashes; put them in a small stainless steel porringer and place it on a gas stove with a very strong fire.

Calcinate them very well for at least one hour or longer, until their colour has become of a very clear ash.

Now, with the grey hot ashes, pour them in successive fractions on your tincture and close the flask. Let them for one week and shake the flask circularly once a day.

At the end of this period, filter into another flask through a glass or plastic funnel with cotton to filter.

Remove the residue that is left in the funnel and calcinate it again, as previously, and pour it, still hot, on the tincture. Repeat the process once again. In the last filtering, reject the caput that remains at the bottom of the flask.

The tincture, now, will be stout and perfumed. Keep it in the dark, in a tightly closed flask, sheltered from the light.

If you want to increase its healing value, you will have to circulate it in a suitable vase called circulation vase or incubator. You will do this in the beginning, when you pour for the first time the hot ashes in the tincture.

Formerly, the masters used, for this effect, a very special vase, called pelican. Today, unhappily, it won't be possible for you to get a pelican. You will have to use a circulating vase composed of a matrass of plane bottom or 1 litre Erlenmeyer, with another spherical 250 ml with wheelwork male IN29, installed neck in to neck of the bottom matrass.

The circulation will occur on itself. Leave it during one week with soft heat 40 to 50°C, on a small electric oven with a temperature control.

At this temperature, the spirit of wine will volatilise and condense in the upper balloon, and return by drops in the lower balloon again creating like this a circulation. If the temperature is too high, you will take the risk of creating to much pressure inside the glass and therefore push the upper balloon out of its socket connector with the bottom flask. To avoid this, you can order the glass blower to place a vent with a capillary tube at the top of the upper balloon.

This tincture can be taken in drops of homeopathic dosis.

Homeopathic Dynamization
The homeopathic dynamization is better known than the circulation, because the science of homeopathy makes wide use of it.

The dynamization is not a simple break-up, as they say, but a potentialisation. With the dynamization, the therapeutic potency is deliberately almost immaterialized. The material substance, the more " diluted " it is, the more energetic it becomes.

There are actually two types of dynamization: decimal and centesimal.

Decimal dynamization.
In a glass flask, of 100 ml, well washed with distilled water, pour 90 ml of alcohol diluted down to 30% with distilled water.

With a graduate syringe, well washed with distilled water, remove 10 ml of the tincture from the mother flask (TM), and pour it in the flask with the 30o alcohol.

Close the flask and do at least, 100 vertical and energetic shakes.

Also instead of that, you can pour in a smaller flask, well washed 90 drops of alcohol and 10 of TM. Shake as previously, at least 100 times. You will have, like this, the first dynamization or D1.

Pour in another flask again, well washed with distilled water, more 90 ml of alcohol at 30%. Pour in 10 ml of D1. Shakes vertically 100 times. You will have now a dynamization D2. Always repeated the same process, until you obtain the dynamization that you intend.

In the centesimal dynamization, the process is similar. Instead of pouring 90ml of alcohol, pour 99 ml to 1 ml of TM or 99 drops of alcohol and 1 of TM. At the end of the first dynamization, you will have a C1 or CH1 and like this successively, to C2.

Rubellus Petrinus

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