384 
EDITORIAL. 
or a portion of alcohol be present ; in either of which cases the sugar will 
tend to separate. The substitution of sugar, for honey, was generally es- 
teemed an improvement. We should be glad if our friend Coggeshall could 
find the pharmacopoeia sufficiently near right in these, as in many other in- 
stances, to claim for it his support. 
Remarks on the Comments made by the Editor of the American Journal 
of Pharmacy, on some extracts from various original articles, published in 
the New York Journal of Pharmacy. — After giving the formula for preparing 
Stramonium Ointment, as modified by E. Dupuy, the editor of our cotemporary 
adds, "the objection to the officinal formula on the score of color, is hardly 
valid, and if it was so, it would be better to color it with extract of grass, than 
to substitute a preparation which will constantly vary in strength and appear- 
ance or with the age of the leaves. The officinal extract of strammonium is 
easily incorporated with lard, and produces a brown colored ointment of com- 
paratively uniform strength." We do not pretend to have furnished a formula 
vastly superior to that received in our officinal guide. But as we were writing 
for our locality chiefly, and knowing the general expectation and usage of fur- 
nishing stramonium ointment of a green color, we have given a formula which 
does furnish an ointment having the proper strength, requisite color, without the 
loss of time and material necessarily incurred in manufacturing a color ad hoc 
as suggested by W. Procter, Jr., which from the contamination of the decom- 
posed chlorophylle of the extract, would never comparefavorably (notwithstand- 
ing all that useless waste of trouble,) so far as its appearance is concerned, 
with the far readier mode proposed for transforming at once by a few short 
manipulations the dry strammonium into an alcoholic extract and ointment with- 
out liability to alteration during the process. Respecting the keeping of both 
ointments, we can affirm that the one prepared by the modified formula, will 
keep as well if not better and longer than the other, and as the color is a point 
of some importance for our public and practitioners, we are satisfied that it will 
be preferred on the score of economy of time as well as for its color, which is 
desirable at least within our circle of custom. 
Emplastrum Epispasticum with Camphor and Acetic Acid. — Mr. Procter 
objects to the addition of acetic acid to the officinal blistering cerate, and seems 
to smile at the idea of fixing by it the volatile principle of the cantharis, which, 
by the way, he gratuitously makes the author to say is a neutral substance, 
when he says not a word about it. He quotes the authority of Mr. Redwood, 
who in the Pharmaceutical Journal, October, 1841, speaks of acetic acid as not 
being a good solvent for cantharidine. The reason is, in all probability, from 
the fact of his using the London standard strength, which is but 1.48. For 
Messrs. Lavini and Sobrero, (Memoire lu a l'academie des sciences de Turin, 9 
Mars, 1845,) state that " concentrated acetic acid dissolves cantharidine, but 
more readily under the influence of heat." Respecting the volatility of can- 
tharidine, these same chemists have stated in the same paper " that while 
manipulating with but 52 grammes of flies, for the researches they were making 
on cantharidine, one of them suffered from blisters produced on the face and lips 
by the emanations from these insects." Besides their authority, Soubeiran, in 
his Traite de Pharmacie, and Porvault in the Officine, both state that canthari- 
dine is a very volatile substance, even at ordinary temperature, and if that is, as 
it appears to be, the case, what reliable information have we that only l-30th of 
a grain was volatilized in the experiment mentioned by W. Procter, Jr., made 
with 100 grs. of powdered cantharides ? Is it not very probable, that in remov- 
ing the hygrometic water, much more was lost. 
Whatever may be the changes which take place by the addition of acetic acid 
in a concentrated state, it is a fact, proved by experience, that the blistering 
plaster thus prepared keeps better — that is, retains its power longer than the 
officinal one even exposed to the air in thin layers. As an example of the sta- 
bility of this combination we have Brown's Cantharidine, which, to all appear- 
ance, is made from an etherial extract of cantharides additioned with concen- 
