PATENT MEDICINES. 
67 
ART. XIII.— PATENT MEDICINES. By C. Ellis. 
There are few numbers of this Journal that have been 
more sought after, or that have contained matter more practi- 
cally useful to a large number of its patrons, than that pub- 
lished in 1833, (No. L, Vol. V., p. 20,) containing the for- 
mulae for Patent Medicines, as revised by a Committee of the 
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and adopted by that In- 
stitution in 1824. 
There are many of the present subscribers who have not 
complete sets of the work, a large number, indeed, who were 
not subscribers to the old series, which has induced the belief 
that the republication of these recipes now, with the addition 
of a few others, might prove acceptable. 
The Committee of the College of Pharmacy, to whom was 
intrusted the task of revision, found the greatest dissimilarity 
in the formulae in use. They state in their report, that "in 
some of the recipes for the same medicine, there are not two 
articles alike, and the quantity of opium in Bateman's drops 
varies from one to nearly fourteen parts in a thousand parts 
of liquid." 
" These variations have crept in, no doubt, partly through 
errors in transcribing the recipes, partly through imitations 
of the original medicine, made to answer the intention, and 
resemble it in taste and appearance, and partly through at- 
tempts at reformation, made from a conviction of the want 
of authenticity in the recipes in use." 
The Committee further state, " that they have attempted a 
reform in these medicines, according to the following views: 
" 1st. To form a medicine possessing the chief compatible 
virtues ascribed to it in the usually accompanying directions. 
" 2d. To approach as near as is consistent with this design 
to the recipes in common use, rejecting inert and superfluous 
articles. 
" 3d. To make the strength of the medicine correspond 
with the doses ordered in the directions. 
