212  History  of  Soap  in  Pharmacy.        { AmMay?ifob7?rm" 
that  have  been  published  in  pharmaceutical  journals,  and  the  dis- 
cussions that  have  taken  place  at  meetings  of  local  branches  of  the 
American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  and  at  other  meetings  of 
pharmacists,  all  evidence  an  honest  and  a  sincere  desire  to  improve 
the  formulas  and  to  make  the  book  itself  second  to  none  as  an 
authority  and  guide  in  the  making  of  preparations  not  properly 
included  in  the  National  Pharmacopoeia. 
HISTORY  AND  USES  OF  SOAP  IN  PHARMACY  AND 
MEDICINE.1 
By  Wiujam  C.  Aiders. 
History  does  not  record  the  name  of  the  inventor  of  soap,  and  it 
is  likely  that  none  ever  existed.  The  accidental  combination  of  the 
potash  in  wood  ashes  with  an  animal  fat  probably  happened  wher- 
ever nomads  roamed  through  the  countries ;  but  the  resulting 
product  was  valued  little  and  played  no  part  in  their  primitive 
households.  In  the  old  sacred  records  the  word  "  soap  "  is  men- 
tioned twice,  once  in  the  book  of  Jeremiah,  and  once  in  Malachi. 
But  it  refers  probably  to  the  juice  of  a  plant  that  was  then,  as  well 
as  centuries  later,  used  by  the  dyers  of  woolens.  Nor  did  the  old 
Greeks  know  soap.  Homer,  who  gives  us  minute  accounts  of 
domestic  life  and  customs,  does  not  mention  the  word,  nor  has  any 
mention  been  made  of  it  in  the  discovered  records  of  the  Assyrians 
and  Egyptians.  Soap  was  also  an  unknown  thing  in  Chinese  civili- 
zation, which  has  flourished  to  a  high  degree  for  thousands  of  years 
in  spite  of  Baron  Liebig,  who  says  that  the  state  of  a  nation's  civili- 
zation is  indicated  by  its  consumption  of  soap.  Speaking  of  past 
periods  we  can  only  ask  the  question  :  "  What  substitutes  did  the 
old  Chinese  use  for  soap  ?"  There  was,  in  the  first  instance,  the 
native  soda  from  the  north  of  China  and  Tibet,  called  kien  in  Chinese, 
for  which  reason  European  soap  is  now  called  fan-kien,  i.  e., "  foreign 
soap."  The  old  Chinese  further  used  a  preparation  called  fei-tsau-to, 
made  from  the  pods  of  the  Acacia  concinna.  Finally  rice  water 
was  used  in  cleaning  clothes. 
1  Read  before  the  New  York  Section  of  the  Society  of  Chemical  Industry, 
April,  1906. 
