The prescription : therapeutically, pharmaceutically, and grammatically considered / by Otto A. Wall.

  • Otto Augustus Wall
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prescription : therapeutically, pharmaceutically, and grammatically considered / by Otto A. Wall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    PHABMACOP(JEIAL PBEPABATIONS. This title is sometimes used instead of the term oflacial, and means the same thing. Pharmacopoeial or official preparations are made, or should ])e made, of the same strength throughout the length and breadth of the land, and are, therefore, more generally obtainable than others which are not official. Abstracts QAhstractum, i, n.) . This name is derived from abstractus, a, um, the perfect participle of ahstraho, xi, ctvm, meaning to draw from. The word means, according to Webster, ' Hhat which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential qualities of a larger thing.'' Many, perhaps most, of the advantages of the fluid extracts are offered by the abstracts, these preparations having a definite percent- age relation to the crude drugs from which they are made. They are made by totally exhausting the drug with a proper menstruum, add- ing a certain quantity of sugar of milk, varying according to the amount of extractive matter in the drug, and then evaporating to dry- ness. Then enough sugar of milk is added to make the product weigh just one-half as much as the crude drug weighed, and the whole is finally reduced to an impalpable powder. Abstracts are, in fact, powdered extracts of uniformly twice the strength and half the dose of the corresponding fluid extracts. They possess many pharmaceutical, and a number of therapeutical, advan- tages over many other of the solid preparations of the same drugs. For the prescriber the definite relation of its dose to that of the corresponding fluid extract (or of the drug itself) is important, for, while each solid or powdered extract has a different relative dose, as compared with that of the fluid extract, the abstract is given in just half the dose, and it is almost instantly soluble and, therefore, equally as easily absorbed as the fluid extract, but has the advantage that it contains no alcohol, and may be dispensed in capsules, Avhich make it tasteless, without materially retarding its solution and absorp- tion. Many drugs might be dispensed in the form of abstracts besides the following, which are pharmacopoeial: Aconiti Abstractum, Jalapae Abstractum, Belladonnse Abstractum, Nucis Voinica3 Abstractum, Conii Abstractum, Todophylli Abstractum, Digitalis Abstractum, Senega? Abstractum, Hyoscyami Abstractum, Valerianai Abstractum . Tgnatia; Abstractum,