728 
Iodine  Tinctures. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
November,  1919. 
No.  1  frog  should  live.  Nos.  2  and  3  frogs  should  be  question- 
able.  No.  4  frog  should  die. 
I  do  not  consider  these  injection  experiments  necessary,  and  con- 
sequently no  license  would  be  required  for  carrying  out  the  stand- 
ardization. 
From  the  foregoing  experiments  it  is  now  easy  to  judge  whether 
a  tincture  is  desirable  or  not,  and  to  estimate  accurately  its  strength. 
After  adjusting  the  tincture  it  should  be  rechecked. 
In  conclusion,  too  much  stress  cannot  be  laid  on  the  methods  of 
cultivation  of  the  drug.  The  best  strains  of  plants  (tested  by  ex- 
periment) should  be  used,  and  the  gathering  of  the  leaves  done 
under  strict  supervision.  These  items  should  be  carried  out  year  by 
year  under  as  nearly  the  same  conditions  as  possible,  if  uniform 
tinctures  are  to  be  obtained. 
IODINE  TINCTURES,  WATER  SOLUBLE.1 
By  Torald  Sollman,  M.D., 
CLEVELAND,  OHIO. 
Proprietary  preparations  of  iodine  have  been  on  the  market  for 
many  years  and  advertised  to  physicians  as  superior  to  the  official 
preparations — tincture  of  iodine  and  Lugol's  solution  (Liquor  Iodi 
Comp.,  U.  S.  P.).  The  superiority  claimed  for  these  proprietary 
preparations  is  based  on  the  allegation  that  the  potassium  iodide  in 
the  official  preparations  causes  a  local  irritant  action  which  is  avoided 
in  the  proprietary  preparations.  The  allegations  seem  improbable — 
certainly  the  local  irritant  action  of  potassium  iodide  must  be  re- 
garded as  negligible,  as  compared  with  that  of  hydriodic  acid  con- 
tained in  the  proprietary  preparations.  Rather,  it  was  surmised 
that  any  difference  in  local  irritation  following  the  use  of  the  pro- 
prietary preparations  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  iodine  content  in 
these  preparations  was  insufficient  to  produce  the  irritation  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  sufficient  to  have  only  a  slight,  if  any,  therapeutic 
effect. 
1  From  the  Department  of  Pharmacology  of  the  Western  Reserve  Uni- 
versity School  of  Medicine.  Reprinted  from  the  Jour.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc., 
Sept.  20,  1919.  This  investigation  was  supported  by  a  grant  from  the  Thera- 
peutic Research  Committee  of  the  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  of  the 
American  Medical  Association. 
