As?ptemberfim}    Manufacture  of  Medicinal  Plasters.  419 
The  manufacture  of  De  La  Cour's  adhesive  plaster  is  asso- 
ciated with  Philadelphia  in  the  present  generation  with  Joseph 
Carl  De  La  Cour,  a  graduate  of  the  Philadelphia  College.  The 
original  maker  was  John  Charles  De  La  Cour,  who  was  an 
apprentice  in  a  drug  store  in  Philadelphia.  He  opened  a  drug  store 
in  Camden  as  early  as  1836.  It  is  stated  that  at  this  time  this 
was  the  only  drug  store  in  New  Jersey,  south  of  Bordentown.  He 
became  a  manufacturer  and  prepared  solid  and  liquid  preparations, 
old-fashioned  court-plaster,  and  a  general  line  of  pharmaceutical 
preparations.  He  was  among  the  earliest  producers  of  ready 
spread  or  machine  spread  adhesive  plaster  in  this  country ;  he 
improved  the  formula  of  what  is  known  as  De  La  Cour's  improved 
adhesive  plaster,  which  was  extensively  used  in  hospitals  and  in  the 
army  and  navy  of  the  United  States.  It  also  became  popular  in 
tropical  countries  and  in  these  countries  has  a  large  sale  to-day. 
The  manufacture  is  still  continued  in  the  laboratories  by  the 
original  process,  under  the  supervision  of  J.  Carl  De  La  Cour. 
There  are  probably  a  number  remaining  in  the  ranks  of 
pharmacy  who  have  a  vivid  recollection  of  plaster  making  as 
practised  a  little  over  a  generation  ago.  Plaster  spreading  was 
directed  to  be  done  with  the  aid  "  of  a  peculiar  iron  heated  by 
means  of  a  spirit  lamp,"  a  process  which  exhausted  the  patience 
when  applied  to  the  refractory  masses  in  the  shape  of  official 
plasters. 
Plasters  with  an  India  rubber  base  had  their  origin  about  the 
year  1845,  when  Horace  Bay  and  Dr.  Sheeut  invented  a  com- 
bination of  India  rubber  and  the  gums  ordinarily  used  in  the 
plaster  mass;  this  they  spread  in  a  crude  way  and  made  the 
plaster  porous.  The  process  used  by  them  was  to  dissolve  the 
rubber  in  a  solvent,  such  as  benzin,  turpentine,  and  bisulphide 
of  carbon,  and  to  this  they  added  the  gums  and  spread  the  mixture 
with  a  brush  on  a  fabric.  The  process  was  the  subject  of  a  patent, 
which  was  sold  to  Dr.  Thomas  Allcock,  and  the  plasters  known  as 
"  Allcock's  Porous  Plasters  "  originated  from  this  effort. 
Some  years  later  a  process  of  mixing  the  rubber  with  gums 
and  calendering  the  mass  on  fabric  was  perfected  by  Dr.  John 
W.  Newell,  a  rubber  manufacturer,  of  New  Brunswick,  N.  J.  The 
process  was  covered  by  patents  and  secrets  and  was  not  applied 
to  pharmaceutical  plasters  until  many  years  later. 
Few  who  now  use  the  elegant  plasters  found  in  the  market 
