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.

    6/24 (page 2)
    number of galenical preparations, as commonly ordered by physicians, and now made with sugar, would be prepared with saccharin (see appended formula), and would be set forth in prescriptions under distinctive names—mist, cretas sacc; pulv. glycyr. co. sacc. concent.; conf. sennte sacc. concent. ; etc. Concerning incompatibles. Saccharin is a tolerably indifferent substance. It is unaffected by the fluids of the body, acid or otherwise, for it has been proved to pass through the system unchanged. Fusion with caustic alkali gives a salicylate, hence prolonged contact with strong alkalies is probably undesirable; and, obviously, acids would precipitate saccharin itself from a strong, though not from a weak, solution of a soluble saccharinate, that is, soluble saccharin; but saccharin is quite unaffected by the ordinary materials used in medicine. Respecting nomenclature. It is greatly to be regretted that the name saccharine or saccharin^ was given to the substance under con- sideration. Saccharine is a name already commonly used in trade for various forms of sugar, and, except that it is sweet, saccharin is not in any sense a sugar, nor is it sugar-like. Saccharin is a name already used in scientific chemistry for a product of the action of alkali on sugar. In ])harmacy, and in medical practice, the very similar word saccharum is the name for sugar itself—Latin being the one language used in those callings, instead of the various languages of the respective countries. Confusion results to all parties when a new substance is christened by a name already used and recognized for quite a different substance, and, in the present instance, a name which in its medical form, either in full or contracted, saccharinum or sacc, is so liable to be mistaken for that of the very body it is intended to supplant, saccharum or sacc. An entirely new name should have been given to this new sweetening material, or, if its name demanded a record of its sweetness, it might have been use- fully, if not elegantly, termed gliikusin {y\vKv%, sweet), not glucosin nor glucosine. At least, it might have been called neosaccharin (new saccharin), which would have prevented the contraction in prescrip- tions being identical with that for sugar; instead of having sacc, as the contraction for both names, we should then have had, as hitherto,