4  Analysis  of  Headache  Mixtures.  {^JS^^T 
An  important  and  certainly  widely  distributed  class  of  medicinal 
preparations  is  found  in  headache,  neuralgia  and  laxative  mixtures, 
occurring  mostly  in  powder  or  tablet,  less  frequently  in  liquid  form. 
Such  mixtures  have  in  the  past  commonly  consisted  of  acetanilid, 
caffeine  and  sodium  or  ammonium  bicarbonate.  Since  the  passage 
of  the  act  or  quite  recently  the  acetanilid  has  in  many  instances 
been  replaced  in  whole  or  in  part  by  acetphenetidin,  less  frequently 
perhaps  by  antipyrin.  Ingredients  like  acetanilid,  acetphenetidin, 
antipyrin,  and  caffeine  as  well,  all  belong  to  true  "  synthetic  "  drugs, 
though  some  manufacturers  have  seen  fit  to  describe  their  head- 
ache mixtures  as  being  "  synthetic  "  in  themselves,  either  from  a 
misconception  of  the  word  or  possibly  with  a  view  to  deceiving 
not  only  the  suffering  public,  but  the  physician  as  well. 
When  the  Food  and  Drugs  Act  went  into  effect  there  were  known 
to  the  jobbing  trade  some  eight  hundred  headache,  neuralgia  and 
laxative  preparations  containing  acetanilid.  As  has  already  been 
stated,  the  acetanilid  in  many  of  these  mixtures  has  been  replaced 
m  whole  or  part  by  acetphenetidin  ;  on  the  other  hand  the  price  of 
acetanilid  being  so  much  less  than  that  of  acetphenetidin,  some  per- 
sons have  ventured  on  the  possibly  more  lucrative  but  unquestion- 
ably very  dangerous  road  of  adulteration. 
It  would  hardly  be  possible  within  the  limits  of  this  paper  to  go 
into  the  minutiae  of  the  methods  which  have  been  found  best  suited 
to  an  examination  of  the  least  complicated  of  these  headache  prepa- 
rations. With  a  view,  however,  of  inviting  discussion,  it  is  proposed 
to  outline  briefly  certain  methods  for  the  analysis  of  quite  simple 
mixtures,  such  as  sodium  bicarbonate,  caffeine  and  acetanilid,  with 
or  without  acetphenetidin. 
Some  fourteen  years  ago  the  writer  had  occasion  to  examine 
preparations  like  or  similar  to  those  put  out  by  the  Antikamnia 
Co.,  of  St.  Louis,  at  which  time  a  method  for  estimating  acetanilid, 
caffeine  and  sodium  bicarbonate  was  elaborated,  which,  though  never 
published,  has  been  frequently  used  since  on  many  preparations  of 
a  similar  character,  and  now  constitutes  the  basis  of  a  procedure 
employed  in  the  Bureau  of  Chemistry  for  determining  the  three  sub- 
stances in  question.  According  to  this  procedure  the  separation  of 
the  organic  constituents  from  the  sodium  bicarbonate  is  rapidly  and 
easily  effected  by  means  of  chloroform,  the  insoluble  residue  rep- 
resenting the  sodium  compound,  which  may  be  weighed  as  bicar- 
bonate, converted  to  the  sulphate  or  titrated  with  standard  acid. 
