606 
ON A NEW SYEUP OE IPECACUANHA. 
BY MR. J. F. BROWN. 
The familiar Ipecacuanha Wine is one of the most unsatisfactory of the Ga¬ 
lenical preparations in common use. Scarcely a week elapses after it has been 
made and filtered, before a turbid and unsightly deposit begins to form, and 
increases in amount until a layer of mud-like matter ornaments the bottom of 
the bottle, and the unpleasant alternative is offered to the dispenser, either of 
using a preparation which will destroy whatever pretensions to elegance his 
mixture possessed, or of filtering out the offending precipitate and thereby im¬ 
pairing its efficiency as a medicine. 
It does not reflect credit on British Pharmacy, that no universally acceptable 
substitute has yet been found for this preparation, which remains the sole repre¬ 
sentative in our Pharmacopoeia (with the exception of Dover’s Powder) of so 
important a drug as ipecacuanha. 
The Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia gave a formula for a syrup, but its modus 
operandi was very complicated, including three separate macerations, and a 
^distillation—the latter to recover the spirit employed. 
Of the permanence and efficiency of the French syrup, made by dissolving 
the alcoholic extract of the root in water, and adding strong syrup, but little is 
known, as the extract is not in use in this country. 
The substitution of proof spirit for wine as the menstruum, has little or no 
effect in preventing the precipitation. 
The following formula was suggested to me by the persual of an able paper 
“ On Ipecacuanha Wine,” read by Mr. George Johnson at the Pharmaceutical 
Conference held at Birmingham, September, 1865, the pith of which was this : 
—1. That the active principle of the root—the alkaloid emetina—was naturally 
combined with an organic acid, the ipecacuanhic. 2. That the deposit in Vin. 
Tpec. chiefly resulted from the oxidation of this compound, which is thereby 
rendered insoluble. 
Emetina is known to be freely soluble in dilute acids, forming with them 
salts, some of which are crystallizable. 
Kemembering, too, the property of sugar in preventing oxidation, it occurred 
to me that by exhausting the root with dilute acid and forming a syrup from 
the result, a stable compound would be obtained. 
I accordingly made a pint as follows :— 
Ipecacuanha in coarse powder, 11- oz. avoir. 
Dilute Acetic Acid, 10 fl. oz., or 9 s. 
Spirit of Wine, \ fl. oz. 
Refined Sugar, Hb. 
Macerate the ipecacuanha in the acid for three days, then pack in a small 
percolator, adding acid till 10 ff. oz. are obtained ; to this add the spirit, and 
dissolve the sugar in the liquor with a gentle heat. The syrup should be made 
to measure 20 fl. oz. 
The sample thus made has been kept from that date (November 6th, 1865) 
until now, standing upon the syrup-shelf in the shop, the bottle being closed 
merely by a turned-wood box inverted over its mouth to exclude dust and flies. 
About three months after it was made, a faint cloudiness began to appear 
scattered here and there, but it did not increase in amount, and the mass of the 
syrup is now as bright and clear as the first day it was made, and is not haunted 
by even the ghost of a precipitate. 
The therapeutic value can scarcely be estimated until it has been more gene¬ 
rally tried; it possesses in a marked degree the characteristic odour and 
