Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
Stoughton’s “great cordial elixir” comes next, in 1712, and there is
nothing more in the proprietary medicine line until 1722, when a patent
for Robert Eaton’s Styptick medicine appears. In that year a curious
patent was granted to George Sinclair for “raising and cultivating the
plants which are commonly called or do produce the balsam of tolu,
Peru, and capair, dragon’s blood, coloquintida, scamony, rhubarb,
jalap, ipecacuanha (and others named), and curing the insect commonly
called cochenele and cultivating the plant which they feed and live
upon.” No particulars of the inventor’s ideas are given.
Benjamin Okell’s patent for Dr. Bateman’s pectoral drops, stated to
act by moderate sweat and urine, and to be useful in rheumatism,
afflictions of the stone, gravel, agues, and hysterics, was dated March
31, 1726, and was granted to him in recognition of the long study,
application, and great expense he had been put to in finding out this
remedy and bringing it to perfection. He furnished no particulars.
Bateman’s drops probably always depended on opium for its efficacy, and
in time various formulas for a medicine under that name for coughs came
to be adopted. In 1833 the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy published
the following formula “to represent Bateman’s Pectoral Drops because of
its general use, and to secure uniformity.” They said the preparation
was then being sold in strengths varying from 7½ to 100 grains to the
pint. The formula prescribed was: Diluted alcohol, 4 gallons; red
sanders, rasped, 2 oz. Digest for 24 hours, filter, add opium in powder
2 oz., catechu in powder 2 oz., camphor 2 oz., oil of anise ½ oz.
Digest for ten days.
The patent for John Hooper’s Female Pills, granted in 1743 to John
Hooper, apothecary and man midwife of Reading, contains a copy of an
affidavit made by the patentee, who, being “obliged to give under
his hand and seal a particular description of his invention,” came
before the King in Chancery, and satisfied the royal representative
with a specification declaring that his medicine was “compounded
as followeth:--Of the best purging stomatick and anti-hysterick
ingredients, duly proportioned and made into a powder, and beat into
a mass for pills with sufficient quantity of a strong infusion of the
above-mentioned ingredients; and when the same is made into pills about
the bigness of a small pea, two or three are to be given to persons
from 7 years of age to 15, and three or four from 15 years of age to 70
every other night.” Hooper must have been a humorist.
Betton’s British oils “for the cure of rheumatic and scorbutic and
other cases” had been patented in 1742. The oil was “extracted from the
black, pitchy, flinty roch or rock lying immediately over the coal in
coal mines.” This was reduced to powder and then subjected to heat in a
closed furnace, by which means the oil was obtained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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