THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
FEBRUARY,  1883. 
FLUID  EXTRACTS  OF  THE  NEW  PHARMACOPCEIA. 
By  Alonzo  Bobbins. 
Read  at  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting,  January  16tli. 
In  this,  perhaps  the  most  important  class  of  officinal  preparations, 
great  changes  and  many  additions  have  been  made;  therefore  a  brief 
review  of  these  changes  and  additions  seems  desirable. 
In  the  table  herewith  presented,  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  com- 
pare the  list  of  fluid  extracts  of  the  new  Pharmacopoeia  with  the  list 
recommended  to  the  Committee  on  Revision  by  the  Philadelphia  Col- 
lege of  Pharmacy ;  in  this  list  the  finished  preparation  repi;esented  tlie 
drug  weight  for  weight,  as  it  was  found  to  be  entirely  practicable  to 
make  all  of  the  fluid  extracts  recommended  by  that  method.  The  differ- 
ence in  strength  and  necessary  dose,  from  those  made  by  the  old 
method  of  grain  to  minim,  or  by  that  now  officinal  of  gramme  to 
cubic  centimeter,  is  in  most  cases  quite  unimportant,  perhaps  in  no 
case  equaling  the  variations  in  quality  met  with  in  the  drugs  from 
which  fluid  extracts  are  made. 
The  decision  of  the  Committee  of  Revision  to  make  the  finished 
product  represent  the  drug  volume  for  weight,  appears  to  be  an  entirely 
unnecessary  exception  to  the  general  plan  of  the  Pharmacopceia ;  in  all 
other  respects,  no  doubt  most  of  the  formulas  will  prove  satisfactory, 
and  with  perhaps  one  exception,  the  required  manipulations  are 
exceedingly  simple,  and  can  be  readily  carried  out  by  any  pharmacist. 
It  will  be  observed  that  although  the  finished  product  is  volume  for 
weight,  the  menstruums  are  all  prepared  with  parts  by  weight. 
The  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy  recommended  formulas  for 
seventy-eight  fluid  extracts,  of  which  number  forty -six  were  those  of 
the  old  Pharmacopoeia  and  thirty-two  were  new;  of  these  all  the  old 
except  two  were  retained,  and  twenty-four  of  the  new  ones  adopted  by 
the  Committee  of  Revision ;  they  also  added  eleven  more  new  ones  to 
the  list,  making  the  total  number  of  officinal  fluid  extracts  seventy-nine. 
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