Saccharin : the place of saccharin in pharmacy, with formulae / by Professor Attfield.

  • Attfield, John, 1835-1911.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Saccharin : the place of saccharin in pharmacy, with formulae / by Professor Attfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PLACE OF SACCHARIN IN PHARMACY WITH FORMULA. By professor ATTFIELD, F.R.S., Etc. One of the Editors of the British Pharmacopoeia; Author of a Manual of Chemistiy, and a Hand-book on Water Supplies; Etc, -» Saccharin will be of good service in pharmacy in four ways. Firstly, it will give patients an opportunity of taking certain medicines in comparatively small bulk. Many medicinal confections, powders, and lozenges, have hitherto necessarily contained large proportions of sugar. A mere trace of saccharin put in place of the sugar, while rendering the medicaments as sweet as before, will give such a reduction in bulk that, for example, a bismuth lozenge will become a mere pellet, and compound liquorice powder, or con- fection of senna, be reduced to half their old volume. Secondly, the intensity of the sweetness of saccharin will enable it to mask the nauseous taste of certain medicines, the flavour of cod liver oil, for example, being well disguised. Thirdly, patients who are obliged to avoid sugar will no longer be deprived of its property of sweetness, for not only tea, coffee, cocoa, etc., but many medicines also, containing saccharin in place of sugar, will once more become palatable—sweet, but not harmfully sweet. Fourthly, saccharin not being liable to ferment, while sugar is specially prone to ferment, its use will afford permanent preparations where those made with sugar would frequently spoil. The exhibition of saccharin will present no difficulties. In prescriptions for fluids, such as gargles, mixtures, and emulsions, where physicians would have ordered a given quantity of solution of sugar (syrupus) they will prescribe an equal volume of simple solution ot saccharin (sol. sacc. simp.). In prescriptions for a powder, or a confection-like mass, saccharin itself might be prescribed (see appended examples). And most ot the large