Ointments and oleates especially in diseases of the skin / by John V. Shoemaker.

  • John Veitch Shoemaker
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ointments and oleates especially in diseases of the skin / by John V. Shoemaker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    4 When petrolatum is prescribed or ordered without speci¬ fying its melting-point, the low-melting variety, which liquefies at about 40° C. (104° F.), is to be dispensed. u A yellowish or yellow, fat-like mass, transparent in thin layers, more or less fluorescent, especially when melted; completely amorphous, tasteless, and odorless, or giving off, at most, only a faint petroleum odor when heated, and having a neutral reaction. When gently heated until the mass is almost entirely melted, the liquid portion has a specific gravity varying from 0.835 to 0.860. It is insoluble in water ; scarcely soluble in alcohol or in cold absolute alcohol, but soluble in 64 parts of boiling absolute alcohol, and readily soluble in ether, chloroform, disulphide of carbon, oil of turpentine, benzine, benzol, and in fixed or volatile oils. When heated on platinum foil, it is completely volatilized without emitting the acrid vapors of burning fat or resin.” LANOLINUM : LANOLIN. Purified lanolin, lanolinum purissimum, is a valu¬ able ointment-basis which was brought to the notice of the profession by Professor Liebreieh, in 1886. In the course of an extended series of investigations upon the nature and distribution of cholcsterin, he deter¬ mined the presence in keratinous tissue of a substance to which he gave the name lanolin. It exists in human epidermis, hair, horn, hoof, feathers, etc. It is most abundantly present in sheep’s wool, which is, conse¬ quently, our source of supply. F. Hartmann had, in 1868, pointed out the fact that wool-fat contained a con¬ siderable amount of cholesterin, and in 1872 described a method by which it could be extracted from wool-fat. Lewin, in 1876, believed that he had demonstrated the presence of cholesterin in the stratum granulosum of
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