Report of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on the adulteration of drugs : 2d March 1838.

  • Robert Christison
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on the adulteration of drugs : 2d March 1838. 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.

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    experienced manufacturer, and were believed by both to be at least of good average quality ;—an excellent proof of the uncer- tainty of its external characters, by which alone practical men in this country judge of its value. In medical practice we hear con- stant complaints of the disappointments experienced in using opium and its galenical preparations, owing to the varieties pro- duced in their action by peculiarities of constitution, or by the state of the patient at the time; and it would be the height of folly to deny the influence of these disturbing causes. But we likewise know that varieties equal in degree and the same in kind may be occasioned by varieties in dose. I have sometimes traced to this source unpleasant eiFects Avhicli were at first believed to de- pend on idiosyncrasy. May it not then be worth whUe to in- quire whether the irregularities, apparently depending on the con- stitutional or incidental state of the patient, do not originate more frequently than is at present thought in mere differences of dose ? —seeing that the drug must be often administered to different individuals, and to the same individuals in different circumstan- ces, in doses of which one may be twice as great as another. 9. To these instances of the adulteration of drugs, in the state in which they are supplied to the retail druggist, it might be well to append parallel examples of the same practice in the case of the galenical preparations of the Materia Medica, which are usually made by the retailer himself. Many adulterations of this nature have come under my notice; but it has not been in my power to examine them with much accuracy, because, on the one hand, the processes for the purpose are often tedious and sometimes unsa- tisfactory, while on the other hand, some adulterations can scarcely be brought at all under the cognizance of chemical analysis. I shall therefore be satisfied with mentioning one only, which I have carefully examined, out of a list which, with more leisure, would easily furnish many similar illustrations. This is lau- danum ; which, as may be inferred from what has just been said, is liable to vary in consequence of varieties in the crude drug employed in preparing it, but which the following facts will show to vary to a degree which cannot be ascribed to that circumstance alone. Laudanum, which I prepared from first- rate Smyrna Opiums, according to the proportions of the Edin- burgh Pharmacopoeia, contained 19.1 and 22.1 grains of solid mat- ter, [dried in the vapour-bath till it ceased to lose weight] in a
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