senna, and aniseed, made into a syrup with honey, sugar, and water. The U.S.P. substituted liquorice for the borage. It has often been employed as a vehicle for corrosive sublimate, but a number of experiments have shown that unless this mixture is quite fresh the sublimate will be reduced to calomel.
Seidlitz Powders
are a well known misnomer. Fr. Hoffmann discovered the Seidlitz spring in 1724, and found that it owed its medicinal effect to sulphate of magnesia with some sulphate of soda. Seidlitz or Sedlitz is a small town near Seidschutz in northern Bohemia. There is evidence that at one time sulphate of magnesia was obtained commercially from this spring as it was from the Epsom water, and in this country then, and in some Continental countries still, Seidlitz salt was and is a synonym for sulphate of magnesia. In Christison's Dispensatory it was suggested that the name as applied to the powders which have so long been known in Great Britain was a corruption of Seignette's powders. Other writers suggested that the name may have resulted from a confusion between Seidlitz and Selters. The most probable explanation, however, was given in The Chemist and Druggist of February 23 and March 2, 1901, from which it appeared that Thomas Field Savory, of Bond Street, London, took out a patent in 1815 for "the combination of a neutral salt or powder which possesses all the properties of the medicinal spring in Germany under the name of the Seidlitz powders." The specification was for the production of three powders, namely, (1) tartrated soda, (2) bicarbonate of soda, and (3) tartaric acid, but these chemicals were not designated by
