Another type of preparation obtained from plants, or parts thereof, not dried and untreated, is the MOTHER TINTING; dyeing is nothing but a preparation of herbal, phytotherapic, homeopathic or cosmetic use, to obtain healthy formulations.
Homeopathy is characterized by preparations where the active ingredient, which should generate symptoms similar to the illness to be treated, is diluted tens and tens of times.
The dye is called "mother" when it is mainly born as a base for other preparations; in this case it has very precise procurement procedures.
Both the dye and the mother dye are compounds obtained by maceration.
Maceration is an extraction process in which the fresh drug is placed for a certain period of time in a solvent, kept in continuous motion in order to speed up extraction. The solvent can be alcohol, a mixture of water and alcohol (hydroalcoholic solvent), ether, medicated wine (a preparation called enolito is obtained) or oil (to obtain an oleolite).
Basically, the mother dye is obtained by placing the drug fresh in a solvent of a certain type, which is almost never water, if not mixed with an alcohol solvent; this to ensure a better shelf life. In fact, water promotes the proliferation of any bacteria, molds and fungi. The extraction is also based on the principle "the like dissolves the like"; for this reason, appropriate solvents must be used to extract certain categories of active principles.
Why, then, isn't dye called maceration? First of all, not all hydroalcoholic macerates are tinctures, not all oleolites can be defined as dyes, as are enolites, etc. The mother tincture is called such only when the quantity of fresh drug and the amount of solvent used are in a ratio of 1:10; 1kg of fresh drug per 10kg of solvent. It is defined as "mother" because, besides being a preparation itself, it is the basis for obtaining "daughter" formulations.
One simply speaks of tincture when the drug, although fresh, is not in a ratio 1:10 with the solvent, but generally in a ratio of 1: 3.
What differentiates a tincture from a macerated one? The difference is in the use of drugs upstream of the process; the so-called macerate is obtained by using a dry drug, while if a fresh drug is used, the macerate is called dyeing (if the abovementioned reports of drug / solvent are respected, in particular 1:10 for the mother tincture).
In the past, before the advent of analytical chemistry, the mother tincture was a formulation suitable for the preparation of many other health preparations. He called himself a mother because if the drug / solvent ratio was kept constant, he empirically guaranteed a certain standardization stability in the amount of active ingredient. A report of this kind, always fixed, ensured that all the preparations had more or less the same amount of active ingredient, therefore in fact the same health properties.
Drug processing in preparing certain medicinal formulas is not exempt from exceptions. For example, when you want to get mother tinctures or essential oils, the drugs are used fresh instead of dried.
The quantity of active ingredients in a preparation is a functional and healthy expression of the drug, which ultimately becomes the quality of the drug itself. These aspects are elements of guarantee of the effectiveness of a drug, but also of the safety of use of the drug itself; if the drug loses quality it can also become toxic, until it becomes a poison. All the parameters considered are in function of the ultimate goal of pharmacognosy, that is to guarantee the quality, efficacy and safety of the drug, through various types of instruments, both chemical and biological.
