March 9, 1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
735 
cent, in good Psychotria as at most 6 per cent. He had, 
perhaps, erred in speaking of this product as pure 
emetia; his object at the time was not to isolate the 
alkaloid, hut to eliminate an error in the mode of assay¬ 
ing ipecacuanha. In his opinion the amount of chemi- 
<;ally pure alkaloid in ipecacuanha had not yet been 
ascertained. 
Mr. Greenish said he thought that no doubt could 
exist in the mind of any pharmacist as to the fact of the 
vin. ipecac, being a very unsatisfactory preparation ; and, 
also, that in the States they were much in advance of us 
as regards the pharmacy of this drug; hut he should like 
to ask Dr. Duckworth one question on a point where dif¬ 
ficulties would sometimes occur in dispensing these acid 
^preparations. Ipecacuanha wine is frequently prescribed 
with carb. ammonium, with which the acetic acid would 
he chemically, if not medicinally, incompatible, how 
would he propose to meet the difficulty ? 
Mr. M. Carteighe had read the literature of ipecacu¬ 
anha, and he knew of no evidence which conclusively 
-established that emetia was the true and only active 
principle of the root, and represented all the activity of 
Ihe latter. As yet there had not been experiments 
-enough to justify the assumption, and it seemed to him 
nn wise for those who had to prepare medicines to assume 
a thing not proved. With regard to the chemical aspect 
of the question, he might fairly retort upon Dr. Attfield, 
that the physicians of the present day believed more in 
the preparations of cinchona bark than they did ten 
years ago. In 
fashions; and since 
-extensivelv applied 
science, as in other things, there were 
the time when chemistry was first 
to materia medica, about thirty 
years ago, it has been the fashion to believe that every 
complex substance is resolvable into one or more definite 
chemical principles, representing the whole of the medi¬ 
cinal character of the original drug. Now, it is well 
known to most present that this view is not correct as 
regards the cinchona barks, and it may not be true in 
the case of ipecacuanha, and therefore they must take 
the drug as they found it, and treat it with the best 
solvent they could bring to bear on it. He thought 
that Dr. Duckworth had exercised a sound discretion in 
proposing that the wine should be retained for a time. 
It was a domestic remedy largely used by nurses and 
mothers, and so generally recommended in popular 
works on medicine, that it would be inexpedient to ex¬ 
punge from the Pharmacopoeia a preparation so well 
known until the public and the medical profession had 
learned the value of the acetum and oxymel. 
Mr. Hills fancied that the only vine that really failed 
was the steel wine; he thought the liquor antimonii tar- 
tarizati did not look quite so nice as that made with 
sherry. That, however, did not matter, because it was 
merely tartar emetic dissolved in the wine. 
Dr. Duckworth expressed his great satisfaction that 
so animated and useful a discussion had been called forth 
by his paper that evening. This only assured him that 
there was some ground for his coming before them, which 
he did with some diffidence, and he hoped that some 
good might result from their meeting. With regard to 
the wines in the Pharmacopoeia, he took it the use of 
wine was a relic of old and crude pharmacy. They 
knew very well that in the Middle Ages, when pharmacy 
was in its infancy, rectified or proof spirits were not 
easily to be had, and that the early pharmacists then 
adopted such wines as were within their reach as men¬ 
strua. That these wines, which were mere relics of 
the past, would be abolished, he did not think was 
a matter of regret at all, at least so far as regarded 
ipecacuanha wine. With respect to antimonial wine, 
f hat was a preparation which he had held in disfavour 
for some time. He preferred the Dublin liquor anti¬ 
monii tartarizati, which was dissolved in proof spirit, 
and in which there was no sheny at all. This was a 
very much nicer preparation, and' the only difficulty 
about it was that it was clear and might be mistaken for, 
other things. As to Mr. Williams’s hint respecting the 
manner of treating the ipecacuanha root and preparing 
it for solution, that simply concerned those who had to 
deal with these matters, and who ought to know best. 
He (Dr. Duckworth) thought it was best to bruise the 
root. It was quite evident that if a solution were at¬ 
tempted to be made, the solvent must have a difficulty 
in permeating to the innermost recesses, and that the 
more the root was broken up the more likely they were 
to obtain the principles contained in the rhizome. With 
reference to the active principles contained in the rhi¬ 
zome, he believed they were represented in ipeca¬ 
cuanha wine by the emetia. He thought he was 
justified in stating that the active principle of ipeca¬ 
cuanha was its alkaloid, because the actions of the alka¬ 
loid were precisely the same as those of ipecacuanha. 
He had made experiments upon different animals, and 
had used emetia clinically, and the result was pre¬ 
cisely the same as when ipecacuanha was given in equi¬ 
valent doses. He believed that emetia had only been 
used by himself and a colleague of his in Bombay, who 
wrote home for some of the alkaloid, and was supplied 
with an ounce of it. Ipecacuanha was largely used in 
dysentery; and as we saw little of acute dysentery in 
this country, it being almost unknown, except sometimes 
in the districts of Rotherhithe and Wapping, they had 
little opportunity of using the emetia in large doses. But 
in India it was different. One of his colleagues there, a 
surgeon to one of the large railway companies, wrote to 
him for some of this emetia, which he wished to compare 
with ipecacuanha, and he used this drug largely for 
eighteen months both upon Europeans and natives ; 
and the result of these researches was that he found 
emetia to be most valuable—not more so perhaps than 
ipecacuanha; but still it was given in a simple form and 
in small bulk, and therefore commended itself. It was 
found to exercise all the therapeutical virtues of ipeca¬ 
cuanha in that terrible disease. That was the first in¬ 
stance that he knew of in which emetia had been used 
therapeutically; and so far with success. With reference 
to the remark Professor Attfield made as to whether they 
might not employ solution of emetia, he might say that 
the doses they employed averaged from one-twelfth to 
one-sixth of a grain, sometimes given alone, and some¬ 
times in combination with morphia. The only objection 
which occurred to him as to the use of emetia in that form 
was that it was exceedingly costly, and also a powerful 
drug, requiring to be used with the same care as strych¬ 
nine and more powerful agents of that kind. He had 
found that emetia could be dissolved in sherry, and that 
one or two minims of the solution he made was suffi¬ 
cient to produce nausea, and it was a matter of con¬ 
sideration with him whether there might not be an acid 
solution of emetia which should be so diluted as to repre¬ 
sent the strength of the ordinary ipecacuanha wine which 
they now used. Then, as to whether alkaloids generally 
represented the active principles of drugs, he thought 
the answer must be that they did not. If they took 
cinchona barks for example, there was no doubt that 
quinine was not the only active principle to be found in 
them, and so with other roots and preparations which 
yielded active principles and alkaloids. There wag no 
doubt that though these bodies were useful in medicine, 
yet in many cases the preparation of the whole drug 
was found to work better and more satisfactorily than 
when a single alkaloid was employed. Therefore they 
could not do without these two preparations of ipecacu- , 
anha. Mr. Greenish had put a very pertinent question. 
Sometimes they saw prescriptions in which there was a 
combination of ipecacuanha wine with carbonate of am¬ 
monia or with alkalies, and there could be no doubt that 
these were non-chemical preparations. The emetia must 
be thrown out of solution, and no matter how often a prac¬ 
titioner prescribed that combination, it was not a che¬ 
mical preparation. He believed that it was also the case 
with other prescriptions; for instance, he did not think 
