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.

    1116/1180 (page 1084)
    [1084] to careful distillation with a suitable apparatus, should yield not less than 70 grains of chloroform. Dose.—5 to 20 grains.] The description given in the Pharmacopoeia of the method of pro- ducing hydrate of chloral is a mere outline of the process by which it is obtained in a suitable state for use in medicine. Some further details, including a representation of the reaction, will be found at page 108. This important medicine, although made to some extent in this country, is mostly brought here from Germany, where the manufacture is successfully conducted on a large scale, and it is now generally met with in commerce in a state of considerable purity. Some samples are in the form of confused crystalline masses, while others consist of distinct and separate crystals. Professor Liebriech recommends the latter of these, which is the sort ordered in the Pharmacopoeia, as that which can be most relied upon for use in medicine. Physiological Effects and Uses.—Hydrate of chloral administered in a full dose produces deep and prolonged narcotism. Dr. Richardson says that during a portion of the period of narcotism there may be complete anaesthesia with absence of reflex actions, but there are intervals of apparent exalted sensibility; its action on the nervous system is primarily on the sympathetic ganglia, afterwards on the cerebrum, and finally on the heart. In fatal cases, the functions destroyed are : the cerebral, the voluntary muscular, the respiratory, and lastly the heart. Recovery, when it takes place, is followed by no bad results. Sir J. Y. Simpson says he has usually given it in doses of 50 or 60 grains as an hypnotic, and of 10 or 20 grains as an anodyne ; but these are unusually large doses. Dr. Richardson considers 120 grains a dangerous, and 180 grains a fatal dose; he thinks that frequency of administration, although it might increase the confidence of the patient or prescriber as to the safety of the dose taken, increases the danger resulting from a full dose; in other words, that frequent repetition causes what is called ' accumu- lation,' while the power of the body to dispose of the agent by diffusion, decomposition, and elimination becomes sensibly reduced. A contrast is thus presented between the action of opium and hydrate of chloral, as the dose of the latter cannot, like that of the former, be gradually increased, except to a very limited extent, without immediate danger. It has been administered by subcu- taneous injection in doses of about 7 grains. It is often administered internally in the form of a syrup containing 10 grains of hydrate of chloral in a fluid drachm. Such a syrup is now made official; and, as the chloral is sometimes given in doses of 30 grains, the syrup in which it is dissolved is diluted with an equal volume of water, so as to reduce the objectionable quantity of sugar that would otherwise be given with it,