474 
Status  of  American  Pharmacy. 
\  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
1     October,  1902. 
bruise  the  ingredients,  place  them  into  the  shop  bottle,  agitate  vigor- 
ously for  a  while  the  first  few  days,  and  then  an  especial  duty  was 
enjoined  upon  some  one  every  Monday  morning,  so  long  as  anything 
remained  in  the  bottle,  to  shake  the  bottles  from  one  end  of  the 
shelf  to  the  other,  decanting  as  wanted  until  the  dregs  were  reached, 
and  if  the  bottle  capacity  would  allow,  fresh  portions  were  put  with 
the  old.  We  must  emphasize,  percolation  marks  a  great  advance. 
Just  forty  years  ago  we  merged  from  the  old  to  the  new  on  a  line  of 
preparations  which  fixes  a  point  in  pharmaceutical  history,  noting  a 
very  decided  advance  on  the  manufacture  of  suppositories;  the  soap 
suppository  had  served  its  day  and  mixtures  of  wax  and  solid  fats 
had  also  to  be  discarded  to  keep  in  line  with  the  improvement;  to  the 
late  Alfred  B.  Taylor,  a  retail  pharmacist,  an  active  member  and 
first  secretary  of  this  Association,  we  owe  the  use  of  butter  of  cacao 
as  a  suppository  base,  and  all  the  pharmaceutic  world  has  learned 
to  value  this  important  subject.  We  doubt  whether  there  is  any 
preparation  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  in  which  the  revolution  has  been 
so  complete.  Other  vehicles  are  used  in  some  form  of  suppositories — 
gelatine,  sodium  stearate,  which  also  mark  advances  in  the  time 
under  review,  but  no  one  person  has  performed  such  a  specific  ser- 
vice as  did  Mr.  Taylor  in  promulgating  cacao  butter  as  a  supposi- 
tory base.  Let  me  quote  a  paragraph  from  the  U.  S.  Dispensary, 
1854: 
"Their  form  may  be  c>lindrical,  conical  or  spherical.  They 
should  be  of  such  a  consistence  as  to  retain  their  shape,  but  so  soft 
as  to  incur  no  risk  of  wounding  the  rectum.  It  may  be  from  I  inch 
to  3  inches  long  and  about  as  thick  as  a  common  candle.  Soap 
is  not  unfrequently  employed  for  this  purpose — a  piece  of  solidified 
molasses  (molasses  candy)  is  sometimes  preferred."  Reference  is 
then  made  to  American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,  Vol.  24,  p.  21 1,  the 
work  of  Alfred  B.  Taylor. 
Fluid  extracts  must  hold  a  place  specifically  American,  and  the 
preparation  and  popular  use  of  this  class  marks  the  work  of  our 
period,  and  whilst  we  can  make  no  special  claim  to  a  discovery,  we 
place  on  record  the  fact  that  we  owe  much,  if  not  all,  for  the  excel- 
lence in  this  line  to  two  most  earnest  retail  pharmacists,  the  distin- 
guished and  honored  William  Procter,  Jr.,  and  Israel  J.  Grahame; 
the  latter  during  his  best  days  and  before  physical  infirmity  assailed 
him,  was  a  good  type  of  an  intelligent,  honest  and  industrious  phar. 
