TIIE SACCHARIDE OF COD-LIVER OIL. 
405 
The fourth meeting was held on January 4, 1866 ; the President in the chair. 
Mr. George Ward, F.C.S., gave a very lucid and interesting lecture upon “ Specific 
Gravities,” which was illustrated by apparatus and demonstrations. 
The best thanks of the meeting were offered to Mr. Ward. 
ORIGINAL AND EXTRACTED ARTICLES. 
PANCREATINE. 
This remedy was first brought to the notice of medical men by I)r. G. Harley, 
who, in 1858, read a paper before the British Association for the advancement 
of medical science, entitled 44 Notes of Experiments on Digestion,” in which the 
author speaks of the pancreatic secretion as the- most curious of the digestive 
fluids, uniting in itself the properties of all the others. Subsequently, the sub¬ 
ject was taken up by Dr. Horace Dobell, who, in a communication to the 
4 Lancet’ of September 10,1864, 44 On the Assimilation of Fat in Consumption,” 
o-ave a summary of thirty-three cases of consumption treated with pancreatic 
emulsion of beef fat. This emulsion of beef fat was afterwards replaced by 
emulsion of lard-oil in similar cases. In the ‘Lancet’of November 11, and 
November 18, 1865, the treatment of a number of cases with the pancreatic 
emulsion of lard-oil, as well as the emulsion with suet, is described by Dr. 
Dobell as highly satisfactory. The substance to which, in these communications, 
the name jpcincreatine is applied, is an oil-like substance obtained from the pan¬ 
creas (sweet-bread) of recently killed animals. This substance, or the pan¬ 
creatic secretion containing it, is represented by some writers on physiological 
chemistry as capable of transforming starch and other bodies into grape sugar,of 
generally promoting the digestion of food, and especially of forming a perma¬ 
nent emulsion with fatty substances as a preliminary step to their assimilation. 
It is somewhat doubtful to what extent it is entitled to all these characters, but it 
certainly does to a remarkable degree possess the property of causing the admix¬ 
ture of fats with water so as to form permanent emulsions. It is in the form of 
emulsion that pancreatine is generally administered; but if the object of its ad¬ 
ministration be to promote the assimilation of the fatty constituents of food, 
such effect would no doubt be more efficiently produced by administering the 
pancreatine alone, or dissolved in spirit, which is a good solvent of it. The pan¬ 
creatine is free from any disagreeable taste or smell. 
THE SACCHARIDE OE COD-LIVER OIL. 
TO TELE EDITORS OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Gentlemen,—In your last number is a letter from Dr. Le Thiere, in which, 
under cover of a desire to relieve agents in France and England from all re¬ 
sponsibility connected with the sale of the “ saccliarated cod-liver oil powder,” 
he attempts to justify the statemeht that the powder contains the elements of 
cod-liver oil. He does this in the following sentence“ My formula is entered 
in the Register of the Pharmacy of Messrs. Roberts and Co., and these gentlemen 
can state whether my saccharide, of which sugar of milk is only the vehicle, 
does not contain sulphur, iodine in the form of iodide of potassium, bromine, 
and hypophosphite of lime.” You will observe that Dr. Le Thiere does not say 
that the powder does contain these ingredients,—(a leading medical journal and 
some other weekly papers misquoted the letter in this respect,)—he simply says 
that Messrs. Roberts and Co. can speak on this point. But let that pass, and 
let it be taken for granted that Dr. Le Thiere desires us to believe that the 
powder is composed of the said substances. What, then, let me ask, is to be 
