39° 
* 
and as the fatter is an article of the Materia Medica, we mail proceed 
to ccnfider its medicinal effe&s. 
All the foaps, of which there are feveral kinds, are compofed of 
expreffed vegetable oils, or animal fats, united with alkaline lixivia.' 
The Sapo ex oleo olivx et natro confe&us of the London Pharm. or 
the Sapo albus hifpanus of the Edinb. Pharm. (white Spanifh foap) 
of olive oil> is the bell, and th 
refore 
being made of the finer kind 
preferred for internal ufe. 
Soap was imperfe&ly known to the ancients. It is mentioned 
Pliny as made of fat and aihes, and as an invention of the Galls? 
Aretaeus, and others, inform us, that the Greeks obtained their 
knowledge of its medical ufe from the Romans. Its virtues, according 
to Bergius, are detergent, refolvent, and aperient, and its ufe recom- 
mended in jaundice, gout, calculous complaints, and in obftru&ioris 
of the vifcera. The efficacy of foap, in the fir ft of thefe difeafes, was 
experienced by Sylvius, 5 and fince recommended very generally by 
various authors who have written on this complaint ; and it has alfo 
been thought of ufe in fupplying the place of bile in the primae vis. 1 
cafes, was inferred chiefly 
The utility of this medicine, in iclerical 
from its fuppofed power of diffolving biliary concretions, but this 
medicine has loft much of its reputation in jaundice, fince it is now 
known that gall ftones have been found in many, after death, who 
had been daily taking foap for feveral months and even years." Of 
its good effects in urinary calculous affe&ions, we have the teftimonies 
of feveral, efpecially when diffolved in lime water, by which its efficacy 
is confulerably increafed ; for it thus becomes a powerful folvent of 
mucus, which an ingenious modern author fuppofes to be the chief 
agent in the formation of calculi : it is however only in the incipient 
ft ate of the difeafe that thefe remedies promife effectual benefit; though 
they generally abate the more violent fymptoms where they cannot 
remove the caufe. With Boerhaave, foap was a general medicine : for as 
he attributed moft complaints to vifcidity of the fluids, he, and moft 
of the Boerhaavian fchool, prefcribed it in conjun&ion with different 
« The acid foap of Corn.ette/ Mem. de la Soc. de Med... de Paris, U% p 189. is fo 
little known as fcarcely to be confidered 
• Lib. 28. c. 12. * Gper. Med. lib^i. cap. 46. 
an exception. 
m TT , , t ~. .-. * Btherden r Med.Tranf.voL2 
Dr. Heberden, I. c. Phil. Tranf. vol. 47. p. 472, 
jcq. Bergius, firr. Mad. Hand/. 1777, j. 309. ' 
refinous 
p. 166. 
mpt's JVorks, p. 433* 
