Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medical and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bentley and Theophilus Redwood ; with an appendix.

  • Jonathan Pereira
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica and therapeutics : abridged and adapted for the use of medical and pharmaceutical practitioners and students and comprising all the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, with such others as are frequently ordered in prescriptions or required by the physician / edited by Robert Bentley and Theophilus Redwood ; with an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1088/1180 (page 1056)
    it becomes covered with a white pellicle insoluble in water. The acids unite to form with it, when they are in excess, insoluble compounds. Various salts (as sulphate of copper, corrosive sub- limate, nitrate of silver, bichloride of tin, &c.) form insoluble compounds with it. Butter.—This well-known substance consists of three fatty bodies, stearine, oleine, and butyrine. The latter substance is characterised by yielding, by saponification, three volatile, odorous, fatty acids, viz. butyric, cajpric, and caproic acids. A small quantity of these acids exists in ordinary butter, especially when it has been exposed to the air, and gives butter its peculiar odour. Sugar of milk (see below). Physiological Effects and Uses.—As a most valuable dietetical substance milk is well known. As a medicinal agent milk is regarded as demulcent and emollient. As a demulcent, milk is an exceedingly valuable substance in irritation of the pulmonary and digestive organs. It is an excellent sheathing agent in poisoning by caustic and acrid substances, and in some of these cases it acts as a chemical antidote ; for example, in poisoning by corrosive sub- limate, sulphate of copper, bichloride of tin, and the mineral acids. Milk is further employed on account of its emollient qualities in the preparation of the bread and milk poultice, which requires to be fre- quently renewed on account of the facility with which it undergoes decomposition, and acquires acrid qualities. Whey is an excellent diluent and nutritive. Wine whey taken warm, and combined with a sudorific regimen, acts powerfully on the skin, and is a valuable remedy in slight colds and febrile disorders. Pharmaceutical Use.—Milk is an ingredient of scammony mixture. [§ Saccharum Lactis. Sugar of Milk. C24H24O24 or C12H24012. A crystallised sugar, obtained from the whey of milk by evapo- ration.] General Characters.—[§ Usually in cylindrical masses, two inches in diameter, with a cord or stick in the axis, or in fragments of cakes ; greyish-white, crystalline on the surface, and in its texture, translucent, hard, scentless, faintly sweet, gritty when chewed.] It is very slightly soluble in alcohol. It is much less sweet, and less soluble in water, than common sugar. By the action of nitric acid it yields, like gum, saccholactic or mucic acid; so that it forms, as it were, a connecting link between sugar and gum. Owing to its presence the oxide of copper is reduced by Trommer's test on boiling milk with sulphate of copper and potash. Uses.—It does not appear to possess any remedial activity, but it is useful as a means of giving in the form of powder, and of diluting, more powerful medicines.