216  History  of  Soap  in  Pharmacy.        {Am  May?  wot?™0, 
as  chapped  hands,  roughness,  sensitiveness,  etc.,  are  caused  by  the 
use  of  such  soaps.  In  connection  with  this  statement  the  question 
might  arise  in  this  country  if  the  composition  of  domestic  and  toilet 
soaps  might  not  be  a  good  subject  for  the  attention  of  our  friend 
Dr.  Wiley,  and  if  under  the  present  Food  and  Drug  Law  a  definition 
of  "  soap  "  as  a  hygienic  agent  might  not  be  expected  from  the 
chemical  autocrat  in  Washington.  The  soap  that  Dr.  Eickhoff 
recommended  as  the  best  stock  for  medicinal  soap  consists  of  ^ 
parts  of  beef  tallow  and  olive  oil,  saponified  with  soda  lye  to  a 
neutral  soap.  To  this  stock-soap  a  5  per  cent,  mixture,  consisting 
of  2  per  cent,  of  lanolin  and  3  per  cent,  olive  oil,  is  added,  in  order 
to  produce  a  superfatted  soap,  which  is  claimed  to  be  far  superior  to 
neutral  soap  for  medicinal  purposes.  A  long  list  of  medicinal  soaps 
is  prepared  by  various  additions  according  to  the  kind  of  skin  dis- 
eases for  which  they  are  used,  as  resorcin,  salicylic  acid,  quinine, 
hydroxylamine,  iodoform,  kreolin,  ergotin,  iodine,  menthol,  salol, 
aristol,  mercury  compounds,  etc. 
The  claim  that  superfatted  soaps  are  more  beneficial  to  the  skin 
than  neutral  soaps,  is  a  question  the  solution  of  which  we  must 
leave  to  the  dermatologist ;  it  may  suffice  to  say  that  opposing 
views  have  been  taken  by  many  physicians  who  do  not  endorse  this 
claim,  on  account  of  the  want  of  stability  of  such  soap  and  because 
of  the  free  fatty  acids  that  they  contain  which  are  said  to  be  dele- 
terious to  the  skin. 
Soon  after  the  investigations  of  Chevreul,  efforts  were  also  made 
to  form  soaps  of  other  metals,  and  mercury,  zinc  and  calcium  soaps 
were  prepared  with  more  or  less  success.  A  drawback  in  their 
manufacture  was  the  somewhat  uncertain  and  varying  composition 
of  the  various  fats,  and  it  was  natural  that  the  idea  was  conceived  to 
first  separate  the  fatty  acids  and  then  use  the  pure  acid — oleic, 
palmitic,  or  stearic  acid — to  form  soap.  Prof.  John  Marshall,  as 
early  as  1872,  proposed  a  combination  of  oleic  acid  with  freshly 
precipitated  oxides  or  alkaloids.  However,  he  did  not  produce 
definite  chemical  compounds,  but  made  solutions  of  such  oleates  in 
a  large  excess  of  oleic  acid.  Preparations  of  this  kind  were  received 
with  much  favor  by  the  medical  profession,  and  in  1890  three  of 
them  found  their  way  into  the  Pharmacopoeia,  viz.,  the  oleates  of 
mercury,  zinc  and  veratrine.  In  the  last  edition  the  zinc  compound 
is  again  dropped,  but  atropia,  cocaine,  and  quinine  added.  The  per- 
