PHOCESS  FOE  PREPARINa  JAMES'  POWDER. 
629 
ON  THE  PROCESS  FOR  PREPARING  JAMES'  POWDER. 
By  Michael  Donovan,  Esq. 
Honorary  Member  of  the  College  of  Pharmacy  of  Philadelphia,  etc.,  etc. 
More  than  two  centuries  ago  a  medicine  was  in  repute  made 
by  burning  shavings  of  hartshorn  or  of  bones  along  with  sul- 
phuret  of  antimony,  and  continually  raking  or  stirring  them  to- 
gether until  the  sulphur  was  burnt  olF,  and  the  powder  had  be- 
come light  gray  or  ash-colored.  It  was  known  as  Lile's  and 
Schawanberg's  fever  powder,  and  was  much  used  about  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  1746  Dr.  Robert  James,  a  physician  of  talent  and  emi- 
nent learning,  finding  the  powder  to  be  an  excellent  medicine, 
and  having  made  a  trifling  alteration  in  the  process  of  preparing 
it,  secured  a  right  to  the  exclusive  manufacture  by  a  patent. 
The  conditions  of  obtaining  a  patent  were  that  the  petitioner 
shall  make  oath  that  he  is  the  sole  inventor,  and  that  he  has 
deposited  in  Chancery  a  true  and  precise  specification  of  the 
mode  of  producing  the  article  for  which  he  seeks  the  monopoly. 
But  Dr.  James  was  not  the  sole  inventor,  nor  did  his  specifica- 
tion disclose  his  process  ;  nor  could  the  powder,  thenceforward 
called  "James'  Powder,"  be  prepared  by  the  means  which  he 
pretended  were  sufficient :  he  conceived  that  his  best  security 
w^as  secrecy.  Dr.  James,  therefore,  virtually  had  no  patent 
right. 
For  a  long  series  of  years  nothing  was  certainly  known  of  the 
composition  of  the  powder  until  the  investigation  w^as  undertaken 
by  Dr.  George  Pearson,  who  in  1791  gave  an  account  of  it  to 
the  Royal  Society,  in  a  communication  which  was  published  in 
the  "  Philosophical  Transactions." 
A  medicine  founded  on  the  experiments  of  Pearson,  and  in- 
tended as  a  substitute  for  James'  Powder,  was  introduced  into 
the  London  Pharmacopoeia  of  1788  under  the  name  of  Pulvis 
Antimonialis.  It  was  accordingly  used  by  apothecaries  as  a 
succedaneum  on  account  of  the  high  price  of  the  real  James' 
powder  ;  but  it  never  obtained  the  confidence  of  practitioners ; 
and  hence  the  origin  of  the  adjunct  used  in  prescriptions,  verus, 
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