Preparation

By dissolving purified bismuth in nitric acid, and then adding citric acid and solution of ammonia until the precipitate at first formed is redissolved. (A better form for this preparation has been published - Pharmaceutical Journal, 1866.)

Characters And Tests

A colorless liquid, of saline metallic taste, miscible with water. Liquor potassae precipitates the white hydrate, and hydrochloric acid the white oxychloride, but an excess of acid redissolves this as chloride. The officinal solution is described as neutral, or slightly alkaline, but it frequently contains an excess of nitric acid, much more than the original preparation of Schacht.