More secret remedies : what they cost and what they contain, based on analyses made for the British Medical Association. (Secret remedies, 2nd series).

  • British Medical Association.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: More secret remedies : what they cost and what they contain, based on analyses made for the British Medical Association. (Secret remedies, 2nd series). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    certainty, even in complex mixtures, by sufficiently pains- taking work on the part of the analyst; but this is not the case with preparations of some organic drugs, usually of vegetable origin, that have never been fully investigated, and especially with mixtures of the extracts of several vegetable drugs; in such cases analysis can only give approximate results, and constituents having no well- defined characters may escape detection. Since the maker of a secret medicine is in no wise limited to the Pharma- copoeia or to drugs in ordinary use, but may employ, for example, a mixture of extracts of a dozen plants, none of which possesses any medicinal virtue or is recognised as a drug, it is no matter fo** surprise if all the constituents of a nostrum cannot be named as the result of analysis. But if it is remembered that the active ingredients of most sub- stances having medicinal properties possess well-defined characters by means of which they can be identified, it will be seen that the limitations of the powers of analysis here referred to are of comparatively little importance in regard to exposing the essential nature of a given medicine, or substance put forward as such. The figures given in this book as the estimated cost of ingredients of the various articles refer only to the ingredients, the cost prices being taken from a wholesale druggist's list; nothing is allowed for the cost of making up the ingredients into the form in which they are sold, or for bottles, boxes, packages, etc. Where the results of analysis are not sufficiently definite for the cost of ingredients to be estimated with reasonable fairness, the figure is omitted. Dr. F. Zernik, of Berlin, has continued the publication in the Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift of the results of his analyses of various nostrums sold in Germany, and some of his results are here included.