THE NEW PHARMACOPOEIA

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2392, 23 February 1915, Page 7

THE NEW PHARMACOPOEIA

IMPORTANT CHANGES IN OFFICIAL . , MEDICINES. On January 1 a new British Pharmacopoeia came into forcej and the standards and formulae that had been official for the last 16 years were superseded. Over 160 drugs have been disr carded and about a quarter of that number have been introduced. Most of the discarded drugs (says the "Manchester Guardian") are little known and little used) but on the other hand a few of them are still popular; among the latter are sarsaparilla, gamboge, musk, and dandelion extract, and notwithstanding that they cease to be official doctors of the old' soliool will no doubt continue to prescribe them..

• Many of the drugs to which the General Medical Council—by whose author-, ity the Pharmacopoeia is produced—has given official sanction have been commonly pres'oribed for years, but their inclusion in the new volume will make them comformable ,to tests of puritv to which unofficial drugs are not subject. The best known of these "new" drugsare acetyl salicylic acid (which has hitherto been best known under the German trade mark name of aspirin), diethyl-barbituric acid (which has also been known under the German trade mark name of veronal, but for which the short pharmacopoeial name is now barbitone), adrenalin, resoroin, and senna pods. Senna leaves have, of course, been official for a long time, but of late years senna pods have come into favour, and in order to provide for their purity they have been included in the omoial book of medicines. What is more important than the additions and omissions is tho change in potency of a number of preparations. For instance, tincttiro of strophanthus i 3 now four times' the old strength, a fact which prescribes and dispensers will have to be careful to bear in mind. The new laudanum ,is 33 per cent, stronger than the old, and as this preparation, which* is officially known as tincture of opium, is a common ingredient of popular cough mixtures, it is important. that the publio should be made aware of the increase in strength; its sale will probably be' subject to greater restrictions.

Some of the potent tinctures,■ on the other hand, are weaker, as, for instance, tincture of nus vomica, which i 3 half the old strength. In thfe directions to pharmacists the metric system of weights and-measures alone is employed, and every pharmacist in the country will be obliged to keep complete sets of weights and measures according to this system. Another important feature is the fixing of limits to the proportion of lead and arsenic permissibly present, as impurities in some 90 drugs, so tha.t the pharmaceutical substances of the future will have to conform to stricter tests than they have in the past. ,