A dispensatory, or commentary on the pharmacopoeias of Great Britain : comprising the natural history, description, chemistry, pharmacy, actions, uses, and doses of the articles of the materia medica / by Robert Christison.

  • Christison, Robert, Sir, 1797-1882.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dispensatory, or commentary on the pharmacopoeias of Great Britain : comprising the natural history, description, chemistry, pharmacy, actions, uses, and doses of the articles of the materia medica / by Robert Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/1042
    with some compound salt, whose base forms an insoluble salt with the acid in the drug. Active neutral principles, such as narcotin from opium, pipcrin from white pepper, picrotoxin from cocculus-i adi- eus, and elaterin fi-om elaterium, may be obtained through the agency of such simple solvents as water, rectified-spirit, and sul- phuric ether, used singly or successively. In the formula for preparing veratria recommended by the Edin- burgh College the process of exhaustion by percolation is men- tioned for the first time in the Pharmacopcfiias. Some experience is required to apply this process in all cases with success. But, when well performed, it is greatly superior in general to every other mode of extracting the active matters of vegetable drugs, where the liqmd used is spirituous or etherial; and it is often not less ad- vantageous in the instance of water, as well as acidulous fluids. The precautions for applying it successfully will be considered under the head of Tinctures. CONSERVES. ELECTUARIES. CONFECTIONS. There is no essential difference in the nature of the preparations indicated by these various names. They are intended sometimes for use as vehicles to impart a convenient form to other drugs, and more especially as adhesive menstrua to give them the form of pill, —^but more generally to constitute in themselves a form for admini- stering various remedies. For the last purpose they are preferred chiefly when, the dose of an insoluble medicine is bulky, or when its disagreeable taste is best covered by sweet substances. In pre- paring them, the solids to be converted into an electuaiy or con- fection ought generally to be in the first instance finely pulverized and then mixed together; otherwise, when pulpy or viscid matters are subsequently added, they cannot be reduced to a fine state of division, or mixed with uniformity. The simplification of pre- scriptions in modern times is gradually diminisliing the nurnber of preparations of this kind. No other form was so convenient as that of electuary for administering the extraordinary farrago of drugs which it was once the fashion to prescribe. DECOCTIONS. This is a common form for administering ch'ugs from the ve- getable kingdom. But it is often ftn- from an eligible one. It has been long adhered to, and with too little discrimination,—probably because pharmacologists, misled by finding the refuse after decoc- tion in o-etieral inert, concluded that the active materials were all taken up by the water. This however is by no means always the case. For since the late discovery of the active principles of the veo-etable world, it is well known that tlie activity of vegetable drugs is often materially diminislied or entirely destroyed by bodmg them in water, if their active constituents be volatile. As mstances ni point may be mentioned the Decoctmn f/uaiani compositum, so tar