Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/177

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called or do produce the balsam of tolu, Peru, and capair, dragon's blood, coloquintida, scamony, rhubarb, jalap, ipecacuanha (and others named), and curing the insect commonly called cochenele and cultivating the plant which they feed and live upon." No particulars of the inventor's ideas are given.

Benjamin Okell's patent for Dr. Bateman's pectoral drops, stated to act by moderate sweat and urine, and to be useful in rheumatism, afflictions of the stone, gravel, agues, and hysterics, was dated March 31, 1726, and was granted to him in recognition of the long study, application, and great expense he had been put to in finding out this remedy and bringing it to perfection. He furnished no particulars. Bateman's drops probably always depended on opium for its efficacy, and in time various formulas for a medicine under that name for coughs came to be adopted. In 1833 the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy published the following formula "to represent Bateman's Pectoral Drops because of its general use, and to secure uniformity." They said the preparation was then being sold in strengths varying from 7-1/2 to 100 grains to the pint. The formula prescribed was: Diluted alcohol, 4 gallons; red sanders, rasped, 2 oz. Digest for 24 hours, filter, add opium in powder 2 oz., catechu in powder 2 oz., camphor 2 oz., oil of anise 1/2 oz. Digest for ten days.

The patent for John Hooper's Female Pills, granted in 1743 to John Hooper, apothecary and man midwife of Reading, contains a copy of an affidavit made by the patentee, who, being "obliged to give under his hand and seal a particular description of his invention," came before the King in Chancery, and satisfied the royal representative with a specification declaring that his