274 
External  Preparations. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm, 
June,  1903. 
THE  EXTERNAL  PREPARATIONS  AND  THEIR 
THERAPY.1 
By  Cakx  S.  N.  Hai^berg,  Ph.G., 
Professor  of  Pharmacy  in  the  School  of  Pharmacy,  University  of  Illinois;  Mem- 
ber Committee  of  Revision  U.  S.  Pharmacopoeia. 
While  the  history  of  the  preparations  embraced  in  the  broad  gen- 
eralization of  external  preparations  is  of  the  most  ancient  origin,  yet 
their  evolution  and  differentiation  along  therapeutic  lines  is  largely 
a  matter  of  recent  development. 
Up  to  a  comparatively  recent  period  the  fats  employed  for  vehi- 
cles of  the  oleaginous  preparations  were  selected  with  sole  reference 
to  their  pharmaceutic  properties,  that  is  to  afford  preparations  pos- 
sessing the  most  desirable  physical  characteristics:  proper  consist- 
ence, ready  fusibility,  etc.  The  earlier  materia  medica  was  especially 
rich  in  oils  and  fats  of  animal  origin,  the  fat  of  nearly  every  creature 
being  vaunted  as  having  especial  virtues,  such  notions  still  surviving 
among  many  peoples,  as,  for  example,  bear-grease  to  promote  the 
growth  of  the  hair;  goose-grease  to  loosen  and  break  up  a  cold; 
rattlesnake  oil  as  an  application  for  rheumatism,  and  many  similar 
domestic  remedies. 
OINTMENT  VEHICLES. 
The  introduction  of  the  petroleum  fats  or  soft  paraffins,  in  1870 — 
cosmolin  and  vaselin — was  a  great  advance  over  the  rancid  and 
otherwise  often  decomposed  mixtures  of  animal  and  vegetable  fats, 
mostly  used  before  this  time,  and  the  substitution  of  these  practi- 
cally inodorous  and  unchangeable  soft  paraffins  for  the  latter  became 
quite  general.  The  immiscibility  with  water  and  watery  liquids  of 
the  soft  paraffins  was  the  only  drawback  to  their  more  extended  use, 
until  about  1882  the  purified  wool-fat  appeared  under  the  name  of 
lanolin.  The  peculiar  property  of  this  cholesterin,  even  after  being 
hydrated,  to  take  up  its  own  weight  of  water,  at  once  attracted  atten- 
tion, and  when  its  power  to  penetrate  the  skin  was  subsequently 
discovered  it  began,  though  slowly,  to  be  recognized  as  a  valuable 
medium  by  which  systemic  effects  may  be  obtained  through  the 
skin.    While  the  fat  from  wool  was  used  by  the  ancients  under  the  , 
1Read  at  the  fifty-third 'annual  meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Associa- 
tion, in  the  Section  on  Materia  Medica,  Pharmacy  and  Therapeutics,  and 
reprinted  from  the  Jour.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc.,  1903,  p.  958. 
